Your life is like a pitiful leave-taking
Wept in a dream before a man’s awaking,
A Call with only shadows to attend:
A Benediction whispered and belated
Which has no fruit beyond a consecrated,
A consecrated silence at the end.
XVI
Now shall the certain purpose of my soul
By blind and empty things controlled be,
And mine audacious course to that far goal
Fall short, confessing mere mortality.
Limbs shall have movement and ignore their living,
Brain wit, that he his quickness may deny.
My promised hope forswears in act of giving,
Time eats me up and makes my words a lie.
And mine unbounded dream has found a bar,
And I must worst deceit of best things bear.
Now dawn’s but daybreak, seas but waters are,
Night darkness only, all wide heaven just air:
And you to whom these fourteen lines I tell,
My beauty, my desire: but not my love as well.
XVII
Because my faltering feet may fail to dare
The first descendant of the steps of Hell
Give me the Word in time that triumphs there.
I too must pass into the misty hollow
Where all our living laughter stops: and hark!
The tiny stuffless voices of the dark
Have called me, called me, till I needs must follow:
Give me the Word and I’ll attempt it well.
Say it’s the little winking of an eye
Which in that issue is uncurtained quite;
A little sleep that helps a moment by
Between the thin dawn and the large daylight.
Ah! tell me more than yet was hoped of men;
Swear that’s true now, and I’ll believe it then.
XVIII
When you to Acheron’s ugly water come
Where darkness is and formless mourners brood
And down the shelves of that distasteful flood
Survey the human rank in order dumb.
When the pale dead go forward, tortured more
By nothingness and longing than by fire,
Which bear their hands in suppliance with desire,
With stretched desire for the ulterior shore.
Then go before them like a royal ghost
And tread like Egypt or like Carthage crowned;
Because in your Mortality the most
Of all we may inherit has been found—
Children for memory: the Faith for pride.
Good land to leave: and young Love satisfied.