Beyond our life how far
Soars his new life through radiant orb and zone,
While we in impotency of the night
Walk dumbly, and the path is hard, and light
Fails, and for sun and moon the single star
Honour is left alone.
The star that knows no set,
But circles ever with a fixed desire,
Watching Orion's armour all of gold;
Watching and wearying not, till pale and cold
Dawn breaks, and the first shafts of morning fret
The east with lines of fire.
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But on the broad low plain
When night is clear and windy, with hard frost,
Such as had once the morning in their eyes,
Watching and wearying, gaze upon the skies,
And cannot see that star for their great pain
Because the sun is lost.
Alas, how all our love
Is scant at best to fill so ample room!
Image and influence fall too fast away
And fading memory cries at dusk of day
Deem'st thou the dust recks aught at all thereof,
The ghost within the tomb?
For even o'er lives like his
The slumberous river washes soft and slow;
The lapping water rises wearily,
Numbing the nerve and will to sleep; and we
Before the goal and crown of mysteries
Fall back, and dare not know.
Only at times we know,
In gyres convolved and luminous orbits whirled
The soul beyond her knowing seems to sweep
Out of the deep, fire-winged, into the deep;
As two, who loved each other here below
Better than all the world,
Yet ever held apart,
And never knew their own hearts' deepest things,
After long lapse of periods, wandering far
Beyond the pathways of the furthest star,
Into communicable space might dart
With tremor of thunderous wings;
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Across the void might call
Each unto each past worlds that raced and ran,
And flash through galaxies, and clasp and kiss
In some slant chasm and infinite abyss
Far in the faint sidereal interval
Between the Lyre and Swan.