The spectral lands of time, the eternal torrent pouring
Of dark and light around us, who fear both dark and light;
And grief that wails in rhyme, and flesh the soul abhorring,
And dismal pantomine played on a stage moon-bright;
Why should such things as these assail her happy meadow,
Creep on the court of children, come crying through the shine?
We who are too unskilled even to taunt the shadow
Groan only in the darkness and spill the precious wine!
For round us beating, beating her wings are in the mirror
Of sleep, the mirror of silence built up with perilous breath.
And in our conscience meeting her smile is on the terror
That chains us round with error and desperate fear of death;
Kind as a child's small hands her faithfulness is round us
With swift and fading gestures, wise as a child is wise;
Out of the gathering clouds that curtain and confound us,
Ecstasy and enchantment—sudden and swift, her eyes!
The hills shall lay away their sombreness unspoken,
The seas shall hush their murmur, the saddened wind be still,
When the long league of silence 'twixt earth and beast is broken
When at the end of all things the stones speak on the hill.
Then Calvary shall cry with glorious joy to heaven,
Aceldama be hearkened and purged by words aware,—
For that in days gone by her voice to His was given,
And to the joy of heaven her soul of passionate prayer.
VI
I listened to the wind who speaks of finding
Among the litter of his blown leaves of days
All rainbow gold of tears that are so blinding;
And then again he says
Something of glittering jewels in the haze,
Incense of praise, myrtles and bays for binding
The wounds that blossom blood upon his ways.
I listened to the sun who can recover
Miraculous instants of an earlier time
Surprise Her eyes alinger on her lover
And run like rhyme
On leaf and stream. He spoke of dream and clime
Sacred with everlasting Spring, ahover
With light more cadenced than bright bells in chime.
I listened to the earth and sea. Their voices,
Too mixed with men, came sombrer and more sad.
They droned awhile of all the tangled choices
That every man has had,
And moaned like ancients with mere age gone mad
And left me nothing that reasons or rejoices—
That seemed so reasonless in being glad.
I listened starward where the ghostly weaving
Of wandering lights is all of Heaven we know
And worlds are lamps and darkness comes bereaving
The world of ebb and flow,
And 'tis as if a bosom were heaving slow
With firmamental care,—ah, heaving, heaving
With an unfathomable earlier woe.
"Listener at many doors,—for what disaster?—"
Her spirit murmur crept into my ears.
"Brooder on pictures breathed on by the Master,
Listen at the heart that hears,—
Ah, listen softly, breathing low!" The years
Were not—for there She was—and, gazing past her,
I saw the Vision raised by blood and tears.