[XXXV.]
But who is this that from the mightier shades
Emerges, seeing whose sacred laureate hair
Thou startest forward trembling through the glades,
Advancing upturned palms of filial prayer?
Long hast thou served him; now, of lineament
Not stern but strenuous still, thy pious care
He comes to guerdon. Art thou not content?
XXXVI.
FORBEAR, O Muse, to sing his deeper bliss,
What tenderer meetings, what more secret joys!
Lift not the veil of heavenly privacies!
Suffice it that nought unfulfilled alloys
The pure gold of the rapture of his rest,
Save that some linger where the jarring noise
Of earth afflicts, whom living he caressed.
XXXVII.
His feet are in thy courts, O Lord; his ways
Are in the City of the Living God.
Beside the eternal sources of the days
He dwells, his thoughts with timeless lightnings shod;
His hours are exaltations and desires,
The soul itself its only period,
And life unmeasured save as it aspires.
[XXXVIII.]
TIME, like a wind, blows through the lyric leaves
Above his head, and from the shaken boughs
Æonian music falls; but he receives
Its endless changes in alert repose,
Nor drifts unconscious as a dead leaf blown
On with the wind and senseless that it blows,
But hears the chords like armies marching on.