IV
Base rewards and glamours, the beating tide of hours,
The crying and clamors and the surge of silent powers
Pass me and pass me now. Silently I go
The one road, the only road I know.
Oh, bare and bright as dreams
And laced with silver streams
Lies the land on either hand, past the darkness and dread.
Though a man must grip his soul lest it start from all control,
And must bow his head.
Where are your footprints on air that I may find them?
Where your radiant garments that I may hide behind them?
No, it is my own road, straight and black
That turns not back.
I will search till the darkness sears on either hand
With the drifting sparkles of some fiery brand,
Of some pain that lights me nearer to the land of your endeavor.
I will search forever.
The torrent of the hours like a veil veiling heaven,
The war with bitter powers—I am given.
But light that you left me—light, your own decision,
Your secret and your vision.
Time? What is Time now. Standing to the thong
And the dream that is passing, time is not long.
And I shall find the valley past the mountains that defeat me,
And see you come to meet me.
V
Not all the spoils you cast, not all the dark was bearing
In dream across the sea, across the murmurous sea;
Not beauty that has passed or crowns the stars were wearing
Or flame that fierce and fast through darkness hunted me;
Not the frustrate desire, the web of memory broken,
The silence where your speech dizzies through all the air;
Not these elude my reach when the dark hours have spoken
As does that priceless token, your soul of passionate prayer.
Oh race that falters on, the striving and the stricken
Passing with fruits and garlands and dust upon the head;
Oh burning sunset gone wherein was hope to quicken
The surge of starry dawn rising above the dead;
Oh clamor over shame, yoke of the little-wiser
On the unwilling shoulders, clenched by the quivering hands;
Patience and proof that were and are your still appriser
Now veil her and disguise her, gone from the spectral lands.