O silence of all silences, where wait
Fame's unblown years whose choir my soul would greet!
Graves, nor dead Time, are sealed so dumb in fate,
For Death and Time must pass on echoing feet.
No grass-locked vault, no sculptured winding-sheet,
No age-embalmed hour with mummied wing,
Is bosomed in such stillness, vast, complete,
As wraps the future, and no prayer may bring
From that unfathomed pause one minstrel murmuring.
Yet never earth a lyreless dawn shall know;
No moon shall move unharped to her pale home;
No midnight wreathe its chain of choric glow
But answering eye flash rhythmic to the dome.
No path shall lie too deep in forest gloam
For the blithe singer's tread; no winds fore'er
Blow lute-lorn barks o'er unawakened foam;
Nor hidden isle sleep so enwaved but there
Shall touch and land at last Apollo's mariner.
And soon shall wake that morrow's melody,
When men of labour shall be men of dream,
With hand seer-guided, knowing Deity
That breathes in sonant wood and fluting stream,
Shapes too the wheel, the shaft, the shouldering beam,
Nor ceased to build when Magian toil began
To lift its towered world. What chime supreme
Shall turn our tuneless march to music when
Sings the achieving God in conscious hearts of men!
And one voice shall be woman's, lifting lay
Till all the lark-heights of her being ring;
Majestic she shall take the chanted way,
And every song-peak's golden bourgeoning
Shall thrill beneath her feet that lyric spring
From ventured crest to crest. Strong, masterless,
She, last in freedom, as the first shall sing,
Who, great in freedom, takes by Love her place,
Wife, mother,--more, her starward moving self--the race.
Ay, ye shall come, ye spirits girt with light
That falls o'er heaven's hills from dawn to be;
Ye warders in the planet house of night,
Gliding to unguessed doors with prophet key,
And out where dim paths stir with minstrelsy
Wordless and strange to man until your clear
Doubt-shriven strain interprets to the clay.
Oh, might I hear ye as the world shall hear,
Nearer, a poet's journey, to the Golden Year!
Dear, honoured bards of centuries dim and sped,
Yet glowing ever in your fadeless song,
No dust shall heap its silence o'er ye dead,
No cadent seas shall drown your chorus strong
In more melodious waves. I've lingered long
By your brave harps strung for eternity;
But now runs my wild heart to meet the throng
Who yet shall choir. O wondrous company,
If graves may listen then, I then shall listening be!
"AND THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST"
Of the dumb, bayed god in men,
Of the burdened mother eyes,
Of the little, lifted hands,
Of the passion and the dream
Sighing up from trodden lands,
Fearless, he is born again;
Bold inquisitor of skies,
Treading earth unmastered, free,
And the way grows wide for him
Walking with the day to be.
Dead the grasp of custom then,
Silent grows her voice and pen;
Part as air the birth-wrong bands,
Break as thread the steel-drawn strands,
Graves no longer over-awe,
Dust is dust and men are men;
A living tongue again gives living law.
Trophies ours by gold and gun,
Little treasures, houses,--nay,
Guerdons of our dearest fight,
Now are fuel for his sun,
And the dreams that lit the night
Burn as candles in the day.
Yet we made thee, Man of Right,
As our being plead to rise;
Of our straining arm thy might;
Even as we prayed for sight,
Lo, afar thou hadst thy prophet eyes.
Ay, thy gleaming spear is ours;
Ours thy fearless, golden bow;
And our shining arrows go
From thy bright untaken towers.
Thou art what we will to be,
Sceptre, star, and winged cloud;
We are blood and brawn of thee,
Glowing up through sod and stone,
Burning through thy rended shroud,
Moving with thee, chainless, on,
Till the world, a quickened whole,
Truth-delivered, naked, free,
Once again hath found its deathless soul.