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Page 8
I can see nothing now, and only hear
Through the thick atmosphere
A deep perpetual well, that sad and slow,
Intones the knell of ages long ago,
And ages that no man can tell or know,
Whose shadows roll before them on the sky,
Black with forebodings of futurity.
Sweet sounds through midnight, liquid interlude,
Voice of the lonely souls that yearn and brood,
Voice of the unseen Life, the unsubdued,
What wonder that He draweth nigh to taste
Of your cool waters. Hail thou nameless One,
Fair stranger from a realm beyond the Sun,
Knowing that thou art God I do not fear,--
Speak to me, raise me from my life's long dream.
"The whole night through thou liest here
Beside the well that waters Lethe's stream,
And still thou dost not drink; O Man make haste;
Ere long the dawn will pour adown the waste,
And show thee, reft from the embrace of night,
The barren world, barren of revelry.
Happy art thou, O Man, happily free,
Who wilt never see
A thousand ages shed their life and light
As petals fall at eventide.
Thou shalt not see the radiant stars subside
Into the frozen ocean of the Vast,
Nor see thy world absorbed at last
Into a nothingness, an airless void,
Nor see the thoughts that Man has glorified
Swept from the world, and with the world destroyed.
This have I seen a thousand times repeated,
Unhappy as I am, unhappy God!
As many times as thou hast greeted
The rising sun against the broad
And tranquil clouds, so many times have I
Greeted the dawn of a new Universe,
And seen the molten stars rehearse
The lives and passions of the stars gone by.
When worlds are growing old, and there draw nigh
The shadows that shall cover them for ever,
(Shadows like these which doom your ancient sky)
Then to the well that feeds the sacred river
I come, and as the liquid music drips
Far in the ground, I plunge my lips
Deep in forgetfulness, and wash away
All the stains of the old griefs and joys,
That with His lips as smiling as a boy's,
God may rejoice in His created day."
He stoops and drinks; a moment the cool bell
Pauses its ringing in the well:
A mist flies up against the dawn; the young winds weep;
Is it too late? I too would drink, drink deep,
But weariness is on me and I sleep.
Cambridge, 1915
XIII - EPILOGUE
Dawn has come.
Faint hazes quiver with the faltering light;
Some airy skein draws in the shadows from
The broken forest where the war has passed,
The Forest Terrible, the grey despair,
The forest broken in the withering blight
Of the lean years,--the blight, the years, have passed,
Leaving a solitary watcher there,
Silence at last.
She watches by the dead,
Her deep white shadow overspreads their faces.
Here in the outland places,
She watches by the dead.
How many dawns have driven her afar
With the loosed thunder of tempestuous wrong!
Today she will remain.
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