Speed me, God! serve me, man! I am God over men ! When I speak in my cloud, none shall answer again; 'Neath the stripe and the bond, Lie and mourn at my feet!" O Life, O Beyond, Thou art strange, thou art sweet! Then we grow into thought, and with inward ascensions We lie in the dark here, swathed doubly around Are aware that a Hades rolls deep on all sides About and above us,-until the strong arch The sense of the mystical march : And we cry to them softly, “Come nearer, come nearer, And we smile in our thought as they answer or no, And we ask not their name: Of the world's prison-place. And we sing back the songs as we guess them, aloud, the lark of our music that cuts Untired through the cloud And we send up To beat with its wings at the lattice Heaven shuts ; And the poet is blessed with their pity or hope. 'Twixt the heavens and the earth can a poet despond? O Life, O Beyond, Thou art strange, thou art sweet! Then we wring from our souls their applicative strength, Hold the cup we have filled, to their uses at length. 'Help me, God! love me, man! I am man among men, And my life is a pledge Of the ease of another's!" From the fire and the water we drive out the steam On its grey iron edge 'Neath the heat of a Thought sitting still in our eyes: And our hand knots in air, with the bridge that it flings, Two peaks far disruptured by ocean and skies, And, lifting a fold of the smooth-flowing Thames, We teach them full words with our slow-moving lips, And work into harmony, link upon link. Till the silver meets round the earth gelid and dense, On the dark of eclipse. Then we hear through the silence and glory afar, In aphelion, the new generations that cry "God," "Liberty," "Truth!" We are glorious forsooth, And our name has a. seat, Though the shroud should be donned. Thou art strange, thou art sweet! Help me, God! help me, man! I am low, I am weak, And I feel the externe and insensate creep in I sob not, nor shriek, Yet I faint fast away: I am strong in the spirit,—deep-thoughted, clear-eyed,— Oh, the soul keeps its youth! But the body faints sore, it is tired in the race, The rein drops from its hold, It sinks back, with the death in its face. On, chariot! on, soul ! Ye are all the more fleet, Be alone at the goal Of the strange and the sweet! Love us, God! love us, man! we believe, we achieve : Let us love, let us live, For the acts correspond; We are glorious, and DIE: And again on the knee of a mild Mystery That smiles with a change, Here we lie. O DEATH, O BEYOND, Thou art sweet, thou art strange ! THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN. Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, The young birds are chirping in the nest, They are weeping in the playtime of the others, Do you question the young children in the sorrow The old man may weep for his to-morrow The old tree is leafless in the forest, The old year is ending in the frost, Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers, They look up with their pale and sunken faces, For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses "Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary, Ask the aged why they weep, and not the children, And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering, "True," say the children, "it may happen Little Alice died last year, her grave is shapen We looked into the pit prepared to take her : If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower, With your ear down, little Alice never cries: Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her, "It is good when it happens," say the children, Alas, alas, the children they are seeking They are binding up their hearts away from breaking, Go out, children, from the mine and from the city, Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows, "For oh," say the children, we are weary, And we cannot run or lean; |