In our shadows of light the planets sweep,
And endure for the span of our prime—
Globed atoms that hazard the termless deep
With races that bow to the law of Time,
And yet cherish a dream sublime.
And they cry to the god behind the veil.
Yet how should their voices pass the night,
The silence that waits in the rayless void,
If he hear not our music of light,
And the thundrous song of our might?
And they strive in the gloom for truth—
Yet how should they pierce the veil,
When we, with our splendors of flame,
In the darkness faint and fail,
Our fires how feeble and pale!
From the ordered gyres goes ever afar
Our song of flame o'er the void unknown,
Where circles nor world, nor comet, nor star,
Shall it die ere it reach His throne?
COPAN
Around its walls the forests of the west
Gloom, as about some mystery's final pale
Might lie its multifold exterior veil.
Sculptured with signs and meanings unconfessed,
Its lordly fanes and palaces attest
A past before whose wall of darkness fail
Reason and fancy, finding not the tale
Erased by time from history's palimpsest.
Within this place, that from the gloom of Eld
Still meets the light, a people came and went
Like whirls of dust between its columns blown—
An alien race, whose record, shadow-held,
Is sealed with those of others long forespent
That died in sunless planets lost and lone.
A SONG OF DREAMS
A voice came to me from the night, and said,
What profit hast thou in thy dreaming
Of the years that are set
And the years yet unrisen?
Hast thou found them tillable lands?
Is there fruit that thou canst pluck therein,
Or any harvest to be mown?
Shalt thou dig aught of gold from the mines of the past,
Or trade for merchandise
In the years where all is rotten?
Are they a sea that will bring thee to any shore,
Or a desert that vergeth upon aught but the waste?
Shalt thou drink from the springs that are emptied,
Or find sustenance in shadows?
What value hath the future given thee?
Is there aught in the days yet dark
That thou canst hold with thy hands?
Are they a fortress
That will afford thee protection
Against the swords of the world?
Is there justice in them
To balance the world's inequity,
Or benefit to outweigh its loss?
Then spake I in answer, saying,
Of my dreams I have made a road,
And my soul goeth out thereon
To that unto which no eye hath opened,
Nor ear become keen to hearken—
To the glories that are shut past all access
Of the keys of sense;
Whose walls are hidden by the air,
And whose doors are concealed with clarity.
And the road is travelled of secret things,
Coming to me from far—
Of bodiless powers,
And beauties without colour or form
Holden by any loveliness seen of earth.
And of my dreams have I builded an inn
Wherein these are as guests.
And unto it come the dead
For a little rest and refuge
From the hollowness of the unharvestable wind,
And the burden of too great space.