V.
WHEN all is said, we can but turn our eyes
In helplessness on the miraculous heart
And secretly dream opportunities
That shall its untried force in motion start;
But life that launched and left us lets us drift,
Our mightiest dreams still lean on circumstance,
The essence of pain and joy is in our gift
But not its seasons of significance.
We cannot by the strength of our desires
Compel our destinies; we only feel
That in our souls imperishable fires
Are hungry for the anvil and the steel.
But if life brings no metal to the flame
What shall we fashion of it in life’s name?
VI.
CERTAIN among us walk in loneliness
Along the pale unprofitable days,
Hazarding many an unanswered guess
At what vague purpose wastes us on our ways.
We know that we are potent to create,
We say, I could be such or such or such,
And lo, indifferent death swings back the gate
And life has never put us to the touch.
So women with the aching will to bear
Still to the barren grave must barren go,
And men that might again like Titans dare
Angelic secrets, die and nothing know.
Alas! why were we born to woe and bliss
If life had no more need of us than this?
VII.
WHEN I see two delay their wings at heaven
To scan the creeping audience of the earth,
I think the angelic hosts of life must even
Break into tears of fire or furious mirth,
That ever spirits nearly perfected
Should count the cost of knowing themselves sublime,
Setting the measurable years in dread
Against their single flash of measureless time.
So issues strange to nature are debated,
Woven in nets and beaten into bars,
While nature’s issue stands unconsummated
Upon the very boundary of the stars;
And souls whose unity had been divine
Sundered shrink back from God’s to man’s design.