It sounds!—And may the anguish of that birth
Seize on the world; and may all shelters fail,
Till we behold new Heaven and new Earth
Through the rent Temple-vail!
When the high-tides that threaten near and far
To sweep away our guilt before the sky,—
Flooding the waste of this dishonored Star,
Cleanse, and o'erwhelm, and cry!—
Cry, from the deep of world-accusing waves,
With longing more than all since Light began,
Above the nations,—underneath the graves,—
'Give back the Singing Man!'
THE TREES
I
Now, in the thousandth year,
When April's near,
Now comes it that the great ones of the earth
Take all their mirth
Away with them, far off, to orchard-places,—
Nor they nor Solomon arrayed like these,—
To sun themselves at ease;
To breathe of wind-swept spaces;
To see some miracle of leafy graces;—
To catch the out-flowing rapture of the trees.
Considering the lilies.
—Yes. And when
Shall they consider Men?
(O showering May-clad tree,
Bear yet awhile with me.)
II
For now at last, they have beheld the trees.
Lo, even these!—
The men of sounding laughter and low fears;
The women of light laughter, and no tears;
The great ones of the town.
And those, of most renown,
That once sold doves,—now grown so pennywise
To bargain with forlorner merchandise,—
They buy and sell, they buy and sell again,
The life-long toil of men.
Worn with their market strife to dispossess
The blind,—the fatherless,
They too go forth, to breathe of budding trees,
And woods with beckoning wonders new unfurled.
Yes, even these:
The money-changers and the Pharisees;
The rulers of the darkness of this world.
(O choiring Summer tree,
Bear yet awhile with me.)