Thou hast fallen asleep, O my burden, asleep! And I know
Thou never wilt wake through the centuries' ebb and flow.
Thy sovereignty of semblance is over at last;
Barred are the doors of my being, thou pitiless foe,
Forever to thee.
Outward thou, with thy lethal legions, hast passed
Into silence unfathomed— yet not alone;
Thy passing wrenched from my breast what thou gavest—
a stone;
And uncovered a heart
Where robins pipe and the smiles of daffodils start
At the call of the south wind. Outward through viewless
space—
A gray gull lost on the surge of a shoreless sea.
Gone, gone;
Effaced from thought, from the world of promise withdrawn:
And oh, the rapture, the rapture that bourgeons apace!
Since God made all that was made and pronounced it good,
Can wrong with right have brotherhood?
Can hate be united with love, or rage with ruth,
Silence with clamor, the high spring tide with the neap,
Or fulness with famine affinity keep?
Can a lie— the shadow, distorted, false, of a truth—
With the substance be one?
Since light is the infinite law of omnipotence,
Can dark its enforcement withstand
Or restrain in effulgent suspense
By epic command—
As the olden prophet on Gibeon stayed the sun—
Its august, perpetual sweep?
Nay— nay; truth and light unfettered reign,
Knowing no pause, retrogression, deflection, stain;
Of sin and night they proffer no evidence.
Pain and grief are shards of the poignant dream
That matter is supreme,
And chance its shibboleth;
That life hath shores divided by breakers of death;
That the roots of peace in the soil of suffering grow,
And heavenly bliss is won
By blind submission to woe;
A dream, a gossamer dream
That is gently wafted away by the first dawn-breath,
Revealing the splendent archangels of the Lord,—
Michael, strength with flaming sword,
And Gabriel, faith with unfurled wings,—
Waiting like cedars of Lebanon
In the serene and might of a patient love,
To guide awakening thought to loftier things,
Tenderly, slowly, to changeless things above;
Waiting to lead through doubt and seditious despair,
From fens of falsities, thickets of care
Into that calm where broods nor gloom nor strife,
Into the empire of peace, the Spirit-sphere;
To lead beyond self and the last outpost of fear
Into the kingdom of Life— of absolute Life
In whose grasp the firmament, oceans, and continents are,
The sun and the moon and the fire of the outmost star.
