Classic Poem

I

'T WAS not the hour of death the Master feared:
He oft had died before, his soul had passed
Through many moulds, as each new cycle neared
Hoping the Golden Day had come at last.

II

But like a giant 'neath the weight of age
Hope was bowed down, and oft had ceased to see
Among the spheres the looked for heritage
Where rest the pure from earth's illusions free.

III

Whither doth this metempsychosis tend?
Doubt stirs the heavy question in his breast.
All that begins is toiling towards its end;
Oblivion hath for all its day of rest.

IV

And when a universe of death absorbs
Into its hungry vortex all that is:
The compact colonies of settled orbs,
The untamed meteors of the free abyss;

V

And when, at length, the lamp of day is spent,
And the charred air of night supplants the skies,
What were the soul without its tenement, —
Without these feeling hands, these seeing eyes?

VI

Even the blest dawn he once had hoped to find
May rise while he in darkness dwells below;
Yes, all may fail him now; the troubled mind
May end at last, and not its ending know.

VII

Such were his thoughts, and while his death hour grew
They pressed into his heart such poignant pangs
As even the lordliest intellect subdue
When life, yet wavering, in the balance hangs.

VIII

'Tis past: A cycle's lustres have run out,
And his unquickened soul in ashes sleeps,
Perturbed no longer by the wasting doubt,
Weak as a babe ere in the womb it leaps;

IX

Still as a vessel stranded by the tide
In shallows whereunto no waters drift,
Looming at anchor on its mouldering side
That neither winds disturb nor billows lift.

X

Yet throes half-stir the drowsings of the grave,
As when one turns in sleep with heavy sense
That what suspended being he may have
Is better, yet awhile, with Providence.

XI

But all is like the passing of a breath.
No eager promptings snatch the loosened thread
Wherein is meshed the memory of death:
He knows himself, but not that he is dead.

XII

Another cycle bears the cumbrous night
Unbroken, save as funeral clouds may roll
And for a moment cross the path of light:
So shines the ethereal darkness of his soul.

XIII

Still through these mists of death the cycles shone, —
His soul benumbed, in utter silence hushed,
Advancing time-like through oblivion,
And pace for pace with all that o'er him rushed, —

XIV

When to his grave a sense of nature came,
But with no conscious meaning or surprise:
'Twas the old flutter of the dying flame,
Tremulousness of being without eyes.

XV

At last a voice, familiar as to seem
His own, heard in his sleep and heeded not,
Broke through the patient whisper of his dream,
Remembered but to be as soon forgot.

XVI

It presages some mighty morrow near
When his long baffled soul once more shall rise:
The muffled cycles fall upon his ear,
And his dust flutters with the centuries.

XVII

Awake, Pythagoras, it seems to say, —
The looked-for morn is breaking o'er the earth:
It grows, it brightens to the perfect day;
Behold man's resurrectionary birth!

XVIII

His thoughts take shape, his pent-up senses move,
His soul looks out from that abysmal sleep.
Lo! shadows of the living world above
Before his eyes in dreamy pageant sweep.

XIX

And in the midst there shone a god-like youth,
Who on his brow the Crown of Sorrow wore,
And there was meekness, innocence, and truth; —
Eidolon of his highest hope of yore.

XX

Hath it then come at last, the world of peace?
Hath he awakened to that ampler life
Where hate and lust of blood shall ever cease,
And all the bitter days of human strife?

XXI

The world is hushed: must then the cycles end
That ever deepen his immortal tomb?
The wondrous ladder must he re-ascend
To truths revolving round a virgin womb?

XXII

Even so it seems when, hark! the upper air
Rings to the battle's rage — the soldier's tread
Echoes above his tomb! In dark despair
He turns his face unto the silent dead.

XXIII

The Master sleeps — the ages onward roll —
O twice nine stormy cycles since o'erpast!
Bore they through eddying lives and deaths a soul
Still dreaming towards its Golden Day at last?

XXIV

The heavens are as they were, the sun, unworn,
Seems on the blue of yesterday to rest,
And drops below; but when shall come the morn
He dreamt of, when shall break that morrow blest?