Children of the Night
is nothing else Than plangent ignorance. Truth neither shakes Nor wavers; but the world shakes, and we shriek. 

        XXI 

      Nor jewelled phrase nor mere mellifluous rhyme Reverberates aright, or ever shall, One cadence of that infinite plain-song Which is itself all music. Stronger notes Than any that have ever touched the world Must ring to tell it — ring like hammer-blows, Right-echoed of a chime primordial, On anvils, in the gleaming of God's forge. 

        XXII 

      The prophet of dead words defeats himself:      Whoever would acknowledge and include The foregleam and the glory of the real, Must work with something else than pen and ink And painful preparation:  he must work With unseen implements that have no names, And he must win withal, to do that work, Good fortitude, clean wisdom, and strong skill. 

        XXIII 

      To curse the chilled insistence of the dawn Because the free gleam lingers; to defraud The constant opportunity that lives Unchallenged in all sorrow; to forget For this large prodigality of gold That larger generosity of thought, —      These are the fleshly clogs of human greed, The fundamental blunders of mankind. 

        XXIV 

      Forebodings are the fiends of Recreance; The master of the moment, the clean seer Of ages, too securely scans what is, Ever to be appalled at what is not; He sees beyond the groaning borough lines Of Hell, God's highways gleaming, and he knows That Love's complete communion is the end Of anguish to the liberated man. 

        XXV 

      Here by the windy docks I stand alone, But yet companioned. There the vessel goes, And there my friend goes with it; but the wake That melts and ebbs between that friend and me Love's earnest is of Life's all-purposeful And all-triumphant sailing, when the ships Of Wisdom loose their fretful chains and swing Forever from the crumbled wharves of Time. 

  

       Two Quatrains     

        I Unity 

      As eons of incalculable strife Are in the vision 
 Prev. P 36/37 next 
Back Top
Privacy Statement Terms of Service Contact