Thy dead beneath obliterated stones
Upon the sod that is at last thy floor,
Who list the Wye not as it lonely moans
Nor heed thy Gothic shadows grieving o'er.
O Tintern, Tintern! trysting-place, where never
Is wanting mysteries that move the breast,
I'll hear thy beauty calling, ah, for ever—
Till sinks within me the last voice to rest!
[THE VICTORY]
See, see!—the blows at his breast,
Abyss at his back,
The peril of dark that pressed,
The doubts in a pack,
That hunted to drag him down
Have triumphed? and now
He sinks who climbed for the crown
To the Summit's brow?
No!—though at the foot he lies,
Fallen and vain,
With gaze to the peak whose skies,
He could not attain,
The victory is, with strength—
No matter the past!—
He'd dare it again, the dark length,
And the fall at last!
[SEARCHING DEATH'S DARK]
When Autumn's melancholy robes the land
With silence and sad fadings mystical
Of other years move thro' the mellow fields,
I turn unto this meadow of the dead
Strewn with the leaves stormed from October trees,
And wonder if my resting shall be dug
Here by this cedar's moan or under the sway
Of yonder cypress—lair of winds that rove
As Valkyries from Valhalla's court
In search of worthy slain.
And sundry times with questioning I tease
The entombed of their estate—seeking to know
Whether 'tis sweeter in the grave to feel
The oblivion of Nature's flow, or here
Wander as gleam and shadow flit her face.
Whether the harvesting of pain and joy
Ends with the ivied slab, or whether death
Pours the warm chrism of Immortality
Into each human heart whose glow is spent.
Nor do my askings fall on the chill voids
Of unavailing silence. For a voice
Of sighing wind may answer, or it leaps,
Though wordless, from a marble seraph's face.
Or sometimes from unspeakable deeps of gold
That ebb along the west revealings wing
And tremor, like etherial swift tongues
Unskilled of human speech, about my heart—
Till, youth, age, death ... even earth's all, it seems,
Are but wild moments wakened in that Soul,
To whom infinities are as a span,
Eternities as bird-flights o'er the sun,
And worlds as sands blown from Sahara's wilds
Into the sea....