II.—Voices
We cry out on the air:
Thy palace halls are bare,
Shorn of the glory of the dream-gods' faces:
Thy sweetest strain were sung
When thy proud heart was young;
Fame hath no crowns, nay, nor no vacant places—
So, all in vain, thy poet-songs awaken:
Thou serenadest casements long forsaken.
Thy rivers proudly flow,
As in the long ago.
Like kings who lead their rushing hosts to battle:
Thy sails make white the seas—
They fly before the breeze,
As o'er the wide plains fly storm-drifted cattle:
Laughter and light make beautiful thy portals,
Spurned by the bright feet of the lost immortals.
What gavest thou to him
Whose fame no years may dim,
Song's great archangel, glorious, yet despairing—
Who, o'er earth's warring noises
Heard Heaven's and Hell's great voices—
Who, from his shoulders the rude mantle tearing,
Wrapt the thin folds about his dying wife,
The angel and the May-time of his life?
And what to him whose name
Is consecrate to Fame—
Whose songs before the winds of war were driven—
Who swept his lute to mourn
That banner soiled and torn,
For which a million valiant hearts had striven—
Who set God's cross high o'er the battling horde,
And sheltered neath its arms the lyre and sword?
What gav'st thou that true heart
That shrined its dreams apart,
From want and care and sorrow evermore—
Him, who mid dews and damp,
Burned out life's feeble lamp,
Striving to keep the wolf from out his door,
And while the land was ringing with his praise,
Slumbered in Georgia, tired and full of days?
And what to him whose lyre,
Prometheus-like, stole fire
From heaven; whom sea and air gave fancies tender—
Whose song, winged like the lark,
Died out in death's great dark;
Whose soul, like some bright star, clothed on in splendor,
Went trembling down the viewless fields of air,
Wafted by music and the breath of prayer?
What gav'st thou these? A crust:
A coffin for their dust:
Neglect, and idle praise and swift forgetting—
Stones when they asked for bread:
Green bays when they were dead—
Who sang of thee from dawn till life's sun-setting,
And whose tired eyes, thank God! could never see
Thy shallow tears, thy niggard charity.
Yet fair as is a night,
O strong, O darkly bright!
Thou shinest ever radiant and tender,
Drawing all hearts to thee,
As from the vassal sea
The waves are lifted by the moon's white splendor:
So poet strains awake, and fancies gleam
Like winds and summer lightning through thy dream.
SUNDOWN LANE