THE ASCENT OF MAN.
PART III.
"Our spirits have climbed high
By reason of the passion of our grief,—
And from the top of sense, looked over sense
To the significance and heart of things
Rather than things themselves."
E. B. BROWNING.
THE LEADING OF SORROW.
Through a twilight land, a moaning region,
Thick with sighs that shook the trembling air,
Land of shadows whose dim crew was legion,
Lost I hurried, hunted by despair.
Quailed my heart like an expiring splendour,
Fitful flicker of a faltering fire,
Smitten chords which tempest-stricken render
Rhythms of anguish from a breaking lyre.
Love had left me in a land of shadows,
Lonely on the ruins of delight,
And I grieved with tearless grief of widows,
Moaned as orphans homeless in the night.
Love had left me knocking at Death's portal—
Shone his star and vanished from my sky—
And I cried: "Since Love, even Love, is mortal,
Take, unmake, and break me; let me die."
Then, the twilight's grisly veils dividing,
Phantom-like there stole one o'er the plain,
Wavering mists for ever round it gliding
Hid the face I strove to scan in vain.
Spake the veiled one: "Solitary weeper,
'Mid the myriad mourners thou'rt but one:
Come, and thou shalt see the awful reaper,
Evil, reaping all beneath the sun."
On my hand the clay-cold hand did fasten
As it murmured—"Up and follow me;
O'er the thickly peopled earth we'll hasten,
Yet more thickly packed with misery."
And I followed: ever in the shadow
Of that looming form I fared along;
Now o'er mountains, now through wood and meadow,
Or through cities with their surging throng.