And dreams a dead life with but one thing real for him which he liveth over and over forever, that night and the woe that her face held.
In dreams my imaginings trace, I feel I lived somewhere before, Ere life was, in some phantom place, Some land of the haunted No More;— But, O God, that night and that shore, And that ride, and the woe of her face!
THE CONFESSION OF TAMA THE WISE.
When all his days were ended and the time Had come when he should ease his troubled breath, And leave this world and all its joy and woe; Tama the wise lay pondering on his bed, Thinking of the silences to be; And weary of the burden of his age He breathed him hard and fained to be at rest.
Then came there to him Augur the patriarch, Who held the office of the national priest, And kept the holy temple lamps alit, And made himself a power athwart the land, In good repute with people and with king, And spake to Tama:— “Now that thou art passing Out to the place of peace the gods have given, To those who did them honour here on earth, And have lived justly with their fellowmen, ’Tis meet that I who am their herald here, Should read to thee from out the holy scrolls, And hear from thee wherein thy heart hath sinned, And make with thee libation to the Name. And give thee hope that now thy toil is done, Thou wilt go hence to dwell with the high gods, Not with the flaming ones who sink in Hell, But, recreate, in gardens of the light.”
Then spake old Tama:— “Shame not the Eternal With mouth of empty words of what thou knowest No more than do the hollow winds that blow From the four corners of the vacuous heaven; Nor think to bribe the darkness with thy gifts, Nor fill with fancied flame the senseless void; For that old law that rules all from the first Hath given each thing its place: and what is life, But the quick flame that leaps up from the hearth, Until the brand it feeds on is consumed? And what art thou, O Augur, what am I, That thou shouldst play the god and I the fool, And dream that thou canst hold the keys of being, And in some fabled existence yet to be, Canst lease me joy or sorrow at thy will?
“O Augur, knowest thou not me, Tama of old time, That I am not the man to act the dupe; Or dost thou think that lying on my bed In mine old age, like some slow-crumbling tree, That I may chance grow credulous like a child Or woman or weakling, and at fear of death In my dark hour of dissolution’s throe, Accept a dream I never knew in life, And mock the Eternal, man and mine own self, With some weird vision born of fear and doubt, But never dreamed of wisdom or of strength?
“O Augur, from the cradle to the tomb, All things about us teach us we must pass. The joys we knew as children, the long years, That slowly closed about us like a prison, The summer grasses underneath our feet, The winter snows, the joyous spring-tide hours, All spake the awful future in my heart, And whispered, all is passing, thou must go, Even as these: and I have felt a joy, Even as a child, in all this mighty world, And the weird, awful mystery it held; And taught me softly I were like the trees And winds and flowers that come a season and die.