Classic Poem

Ah, who will give us back our long-lost innocence
and tremulous blue within the garden, else untrod
save by the angels' feet, where joys of childish sense
and twin-born hearts went up like morning-praise to God!

where we were one with all the glad sun-woven hours
and rapture of golden morn thrill'd thro' our blood and nerve:
— our souls knew nothing more than knew the unheeding flowers
nor their own beauty's law, nor what it was to serve.

But that dark lust to learn and suffer drove us forth:
we wearied of the light, of life unvaried, whole;
and seeking have we wandered, south and west and north,
some darker fire to fuse the full-grown sense with soul.

And see! for ages have we dragg'd our long disease
o'er many a hideous street and mouldering sepulchres,
till not a capital of towers and blacken'd trees
but reeks with taint of us, drips with our blood and tears.

London or Tarshish, Rome and Paris our delights
have gilded and thereon have soil'd them: first and last,
flush'd with our wine and song, has shudder'd at our nights,
and cast us, lepers, out into the ancient waste.

Where grinning deserts hide unhid your skeleton stones,
Tadmor or Nineveh, our pomp has enter'd in:
the Dead Sea rolls more bitter above our blasted bones
and spews upon its shore the unwasted scurf of sin.

And what have we at last of all our wandering?
the sadness of the flesh, the languor of the soul,
and this — hard eyes, scarr'd cheeks, lips that forget to sing:
— ah! we could lay us down and let the deluge roll.

our corpses into Lethe's pit — but that a breeze
has blown upon our eyes with tidings of the blue
still somewhere: let us bend this once our penitent knees,
then rise and seek for aye the garden that we knew.

Ay, let the cities pile themselves in the red mud,
and flare into the night that hides the offended heaven,
and belch their sodden dream of empire, lust and blood,
working in dread ferment of the old hellish leaven,

Psyche! our feet are set towards the eastern star,
our eyes upon the spaces of the morning air;
what tho' the garden goal shine o'er sad seas afar,
tho' young hope guide us not, our soul shall not despair.

Enough, we shall have dream'd that solitary emprise,
enough, we shall have been true to our austere thought,
that, if we ne'er behold with longing human eyes
our paradise of yore, sister, we shall have sought.