They who stand with the Lamb on Mount Zion.
having the Father's name written in their foreheads,
sing a new song.
Innocence is the theme of it—
innocence fresher than first-of-morning light,
sweeter than waters fountaining from a source
high in bright hills.
The sound that comes
is frail as a flute, is pure
as the shyest of woodland calls.
It is all child in a ruffian world.
O how can it hold?
How prevail?
No one can tell. No one knows
until—at last—
returned to his own immaculate mount—
each finds issuing from his own throat
the song that was his
before the world.
And so. as himself the singer, knows.
And so can tell.
