"The mortal tide moves on
To some immortal shore,
Past purple peaks of dusk and dawn,
Into the evermore.
"All the tomes of all the tribes,
All the songs of all the scribes,
All that priest and prophet say,
What is it? and what are they?
"Fancies futile, feeble, vain,
Idle dream-drift of the brain,—
As of old the mystery
Doth encompass you and me.
"Old and yet young, the jocund Earth
Doth speed among the spheres,
Her children of imperial birth
Are all the golden years.
"The happy orb sweeps on,
Led by some vague unrest,
Some mystic hint of joys unborn
Springing within her breast."
What takes one in "The Gates of Silence," which, of course, means the gates of death, are the large, sweeping views. The poet strides through time and space like a Colossus and
"flings
Out of his spendthrift hands
The whirling worlds like pebbles,
The meshèd stars like sands."
Loveman's stanzas have not the flexibility and freedom of those of Moody and McCarthy, but they bring in full measure the largeness of thought which a true poem requires.