Classic Poem

In the days of the glad, sweet spring of the world,
In the dewy silver dawn of time,
The flame-wings of legends were loosed and unfurled,
Those blithe-voiced birds of that clear-ethered clime.

Might I catch the receding tones of those tales,
And follow the course of their murmurous flow,
Ah, God, to mine eyes would be given the vales
And the hills whence the sun and the spring never go.

For surely somewhere will the soul find life,
That thrills through its uttermost fibrils of frame,
With freedom from loss, and trouble, and strife,
And the far-off fleeting of the loves it would claim.

Of old on the sleep of the brave man there fell
Dreams clothed about as with fervor of fire,
Fair shapes of dream, with lips sweet from song's well,
The visible splendor of the soul's chief desire.

So when Theseus lay blind in the prison's night,
In the dumb, dull stillness no sound broke afar,
Ariadne made flee the darkness like light,
Shone marvellous-clear on his sight like a star.

And he followed the thread of its golden gleam
Till the gracious white daylight shone broad on his face,
Past the cowed, crouched monster, out into the stream
Of the wide, vital air, from the foul, dank place.

And she loved him, clove to him, led him forth,
Sat with him in his hollow, blue-prowed, swift boal,
Ploughed with him the perilous sea-ways to the north,
Struck out of his soul its chief pure note.

So the distant and difficult grew near and less hard,
Compelled by the equable pulse of her breath,
And his spirit waxed clear as the sight of a bard
Transpiercing the veils of life and of death.

Then the might of the true took hold of him,
And gave him strong longings for seeing his thought
Take shape and color, from the deepmost dim
Vast tracts of his soul into body wrought.

So she bade him God-speed, and bade him set sail,
Lest his love should impede the things to be;
And watched the small speck of his boat sink and fail
Across the immeasurable glow of the sea.

Ah, brothers, shall our eyes the glad vision rejoice,
The faultless fair form of the life we would live?
Shall we find outlet from the world's thick noise?
Has Time the old power such gifts to give?

What has been, shall be; the gods on high
Sit apart in immutable, happy peace;
They fashioned man and the world; till they die
Neither pleasure nor pain shall know loss nor increase.