Classic Poem

We are not wholly blest who use the earth,
Nor wholly wretched who inherit sleep.
Behold, it is a palace of delight
Built beyond fear of storms by day or night;
And whoso enters doth his station keep,
Unmindful of the stain upon his birth.

Sin hath no hold on it; yea, men may take
Their loves into their arms tenaciously;
For sleep is as a chamber high and fair,
Wherein warm love makes light of cold despair;
And wives may deem their faithless lords are nigh,
And maids may kiss false lovers for love's sake.

Thou canst not fetter it, for it is free;
No tyrant yokes it to the labouring oar.
It is a solemn height, wind-visited,
And touched by sunlight when the sun is fled —
Where bondsmen lift their aching brows no more,
And men have peace, and slaves have liberty.

See now it hath a tender bloom, like light
Viewed at the autumn's latest outgoing.
It is the faithful summer of our sorrow,
A kindly year whose winter is the morrow.
See now 'tis like the firstlings of the spring,
Which win their fragrance in the snow's despite.

Faint, far-off sounds are blown unto our ears,
Faint, far-off savours steal unto our lips,
When orient dreams assemble manifold,
And sleep doth throne himself on royal gold.
Then night is noon-tide, morning the eclipse
Wherein no comfort is but in our tears.

Man may not say unto himself: " Time fills
Day's even measures with matched bitterness, "
Whilst he hath sleep — a jewel without peer,
Which hath the light as but its bezel here.
For there are days which curse, and nights which bless,
And unseen forces striving with our ills.

We are not equal with the unseen powers,
Who eat but bread, and suffer strange decay.
Yet there are pleasant environs which make,
Mid adverse things, a heaven for our sake.
Beyond the precincts of the open day
There is an easy entrance which is ours.

I entered in thereat, and I had peace;
By ancient ways I went and I had rest;
And space was far about me, murmurings,
And 'wildering speed of undulary wings:
My limbs were lissom, and my soul possessed
Of thousand fantasies which would not cease.

Beyond me were wide plains of amber light,
And sunless regions stained with solemn gold.
And there the myriad wild-fowl soared on high,
Scattered and strewn like dust against the sky.
And, in the east, a tender shadow rolled
Forth from the distant antres of the night.

Airial mountains of their substance gave
To beamless forests where the breezes stirred
Faintly, and faintly shook the leaves. I saw
The rising mists behind the mountains draw
Like phantoms to the hovering clouds, and heard,
Far-off, the sullen thunder of the wave.

Not any space of all the world's desire
Was fairer to mine eyes, and, when my death
Seemed instant on my head, mine eyes grew dim,
And all my life fled out of every limb.
My fears I felt as one who holds his breath,
And fears betwixt the thunder and the fire.

For I was falling, falling from on high
With the deceitful earth, which sunk away.
Unmeasured depths were sounded as I fell,
And there was peace no more, nor could I tell,
For dizziness, the darkness from the day,
So numb of sense, so dead with fear was I.

O blessed was the hand that caught my hand,
Unseen, and swung me thrice throughout all space!
Blessed that sought me at the ocean's brink,
And gave me hope as food and love as drink,
And fanned with snowy flowers mine anguished face,
And soothed me with her kisses as she fanned.

Lo, she was holy and most strangely fair,
Sleek-throated like a dove, and solemn-eyed.
Her lips were, as an infant's, small and sweet,
And as an infant's were her naked feet;
And scarf-like flowed and shimmered at each side
Her cloven tresses of untrammeled hair.

The melancholy waste of wave was dead,
And silence haunted the Marmorean hills;
Nor any sound of any breeze or bird
Within the sunshine or the shade was heard
When as she said, " O love! 'tis life that kills, "
When as she sighed, and touched my lips, and said:

" Small light have they, O love! who love their lives,
Calling the dead the past, and fearing death.
For these our ways aforetime have been trod
By patient suffering ones who now are God,
Being immortal, with abiding breath,
And joy that ravishes, and hope that strives.

" 'Tis but a terror which entreats control.
A baseless fear which thwarts us of the dues
Of sacred death — things effable above,
And roomy thrones, and light of endless love.
Wherefore 'tis meet to seal our fate and use
The trodden path which disenthralls the soul.

" For I am weary of the day which dips,
And, faint with love, I hunger for thy sighs.
They who have tasted of my limbs, and felt
My veins and the keen life that in them dwelt
Like fire, and felt as fire my kindling eyes,
And caught my tears upon their trembling lips:

" These shall be hateful to me for thy sake,
If thou, O love! wilt drink of this with me, "
Whereat a tiny, vase-like amethyst
She pressed from lip to lip, and then I wist
Our steps were God-like and our souls were free,
For all our flesh fell from us flake by flake.

And all our bones we gathered in a pyre,
Like faggots, and the flesh thereon we laid:
And all the mystery of baleful years,
And all our mortal sleep, and sin, and tears
We heaped upon the pile which we had made,
And closed them in and burnt them with swift fire.

And in the smoke thereof we faded thence,
Away into empyreal regions blest,
Beyond the extreme cloisters of the skies.
And, like a flame, the lightning of her eyes
Burnt in my path, and endless was our rest.
Endless our love and love's omnipotence.

And in our strength and everlasting youth,
Arising in clear dawn and light which saves,
We found a realm wherein earth's sorrowings
Were heard no more, where myriad blameless things
Rose from their venal and lethean graves,
And found a resting-place, and called it Truth.

They rose from island and from continent,
Pale-featured spirits in apparel bright;
They rose from ancient rivers and the sea
In human shapes and garbs of chastity;
They came from sepulchres of death and night,
Faint with despair and long imprisonment.

And all these shapes found each its own desire,
Whate'er its faith on earth, whate'er its creed.
The Christian saw at last the Son unsoiled;
The Prophet's God upon his creatures smiled.
The Indian found his Manitou indeed,
Lama his life, the Magian his fire.

For all these souls were innocent below,
And loved God well who loved what he had made;
And, loving all things, though they found not truth,
Were yet received of heav'n, and gat them youth,
And pleasant sleep, and shelter in the shade,
And endless mitigation of their woe.

For God, who is our Master and our Lord,
Took pity on their helpless ignorance,
And, from their wives, their children and their pelf,
And all their idols, took them to himself,
And clad them round with glorious circumstance,
And all the joys high heaven doth afford.

O could I sleep for ever in a dream,
Or dream such dreams for ever while I slept!
Onwards they went, and sung their mystic psalms,
Screening their pallid faces with their palms,
Whither the Unimaginable kept
His kingly state as doth Him best beseem.

Onwards they went unto the Paraclete,
With far-heard sound of voice and instrument,
I could not follow them, I could not tread
Where passion burns not, and where lust is dead;
For love had caught me in his arms, and bent
My will to his, and bound my feeble feet.

Yes, love possessed me, and, with keen desire.
I took her eyes' wild light into my soul.
I clasped her spirit-form, and drunk her breath,
And then our lips, more near than life and death,
Clung each to each in silence, and control
Vanished as snow-flakes vanish in the fire.

That moment there was darkness, and the lists
Of heav'n gave place unto the gloom of day.
Whereat I woke to deadly fears and pain,
To misery of the thunder and the rain,
And crime, and subterfuge, and fierce affray
Of warring creeds and brawling mammonists.