Classic Poem

The moon of memory rises clear
And fills with radiance all the night;
I am borne back in wondrous flight
To where the pleasant fields appear
Familiar with the blossoms dear
To times that pour their splendid light
Into my very sight of sight.
And reassume the engirding atmosphere.

I stand within the mystic land
Which spirit builds with all the past
As elements that can but last,
While unforgotten murmurs bland
Of voices whose deep thoughts expand
Into the glow with boundaries vast,
Which hope has led to glories fast
By Heaven's mid purport of ideas grand.

Restore the charm that brought my feet
To water-springs of old renown,
And hill-tops on whose grassy crown
White temples shone with lore replete
To assuage the pain of life's deceit,
Persuade the soul to pause, and down
The green descent with roses sown
To watch glad garments of the Muses fleet

The solemn majesty of peace
Surrounds me weary with the roar
Of life that loudens more and more;
At one brave stroke I find release,
In this calm air all tumults cease,
Old stars into my vision soar,
And dreams that once my being bore
Into the yellowing fields of thought's increase

Flash through my brain and heart again;
All things return unto that spring
Wherein my hopes began to sing;
I am once more the denizen
Of earlier aspirations, past the ken
Of dullard hours that hardly bring
One flower its fading light to fling
On toils that are the plodding lot of men.

And lo! my moon reveals a change,
Its light grows whiter, nobler far,
Its lustre sweeps transfigured star
On star into its mighty range;
The night transforms its moated grange
Into a field with bound and bar
Where sunrise and the sunset are;
What once was lives, and what is now grows strange.

All the sweet past revives and glows
Around me with the pristine fire
Suffusing youth's undimmed desire;
The spring of time before the snows
Of disappointment spoiled the rose
Of half its petals, and the ire
Of Destiny built smouldering pyre
For much this barren time no longer knows.

I am again with you, dear friend,
In lands that see no earthly sun,
But where the threads of life are spun,
The realm of thought without an end
Or mere beginning, whence gods send
The influence by whose might is done
Whatever is by action won
From the sheer dark whose dreamy backgrounds lend

Sight and just strength to noblest deeds;
Nor are we there alone: I sit,
And hark the cadence of your wit;
I bring my blossoms mixed with weeds,
And thrill while many another leads
By subtle speech or sacred writ
To that realm's spaces inly fit
For every instant's many-shifting needs.

O'er fountains Oriental, sacred wells,
Dim distant flower-producing sods,
Haunts of gigantic mystic gods,
More wondrous than more recent spells
Evoke in simpler-colored dells,
You wielded strange diviner's rods,
And as the waters burst the clods
We drank and fled Earth's narrowing cells.

But chief we trod with one who saw
Life's self unveiled, the top of thought
And crown of men, whose spirit wrought,
By being's self-returning law
And Time's successive need to draw
Help from Greek sources deeply fraught
With all her highest intellects sought,
In you who were his message without flaw.

Above the world we saw the dance
Of pure Ideas circling through
The realm of Godhead, and we knew
How thoughts from hidden thoughts advance,
And touched by your illumining lance
The darkest ways of hope with dew,
Which winds of sunlight overblew,
Glittered as gloom receded from its glance.

The deep religions of all Time
Spoke once again through your clear lips,
Old poets woke from sad eclipse,
And sang as in their golden prime
Of life eternal, and the clime
Unreached by keel of mortal ships,
And light whose glorious ocean clips
Those dreams about with mystic rhyme on rhyme.

Wherever thought was loftiest,
Wherever oracle was heard
Pronouncing being's solvent word,
Wherever song was chief and best,
And truth sustained the winnowing test
Of age-long rigor, where new-stirred
Wise forecast once again recurred
To those dim sources whence have flowed the blest

Assurances of fervid bard,
That hope achieves its longings high,
And tears ascend into the sky,
Part of the domes whose building hard
Prepares the fate propitious-starred,
Which silences Heart's general sigh,
Making response to every cry,
And fulness gives to soul however marred,

Wherever bliss with instinct sure
Led to its mid of permanence,
The home of souls, from wandering whence
Attainment felt itself secure,
Wherever dwelt the stainless-pure,
We found you, and the freeing sense
Of high success warred on the dense
And thickening veil which we perforce endure,

The muddying vesture of decay,
And that dull garb we trod to dust,
And knew ourselves as know we must,
Children of Light's unchanging day.
You set our feet upon the way
Of purposed and unfaltering trust,
You taught to find the worth which rust
Cannot corrupt nor years confuse its ray.

And others mixed a gentler tone
With your firm voice of sight and power,
The woman's gracious height of dower
To see the very truth her own,
To gather blooms to thought unknown,
Rapt feeling's shy and secret flower,
To gift the many-pleasured hour
With dreams from God's own fastness hither flown.

My thoughts unto those days revert,
And mingle with those happier eyes
Alit with flame of fresh surmise,
That doubt was weak to lame or hurt,
Or fear to change their gaze alert
From seeing past the yielding skies
Ideal shapes of light arise
Which Time could neither touch nor disconcert.

I know them as my best of friends,
And separation cannot dim
The echo of the mutual hymn,
Wherein as parts, whose mixture wends
To music's beauty-fashioning ends,
We passed thought's ever-widening rim,
And the world's face of anguish grim
Saw melt in glow that strength with victory blends.

Alack! the band is not complete,
For some have trod the ways of Death,
And know the tale his shut mouth saith;
You watched their slowly-vanishing feet
Into the luminous mists retreat,
And heard the song below the breath,
Which deep to deep still uttereth,
Love's silent voice than audible tunes more sweet.

They finished well the course ordained,
Their eyes beheld before their close
Heaven's white and wondrous central rose;
They passed from life unvexed, unstained,
And many heights of hope attained;
The vision of their memory grows
A dream wherein the far light glows
Of that fair clime that soul has never gained.

Save it has had the hardihood
To penetrate the secrets hid
In Truth's sky-cleaving pyramid;
Afar from Error's darkling wood
They clomb the mount, and happy stood,
Where, from earth's lingering traces rid,
With gaze that feared not lifted lid
They watched reveal itself the Infinite Good.

And we shall meet them as before
Where through the many-blossomed vale
Truth flows without surcease or fail;
The robe of radiance which they wore
Shall grow in lustre more and more
As we awake from the sad tale
Of Time, and hear Love's nightingale
Lighten the space which once sheer darkness wore.

I would my words could reach their ear
Across the gulf that unto us
Is Heaven's mid self grown amorous
Of those we held so lief and dear;
If the immortals may buThear
On heights of life less tenebrous,
And lit by fires that shake not thus
As stars that guide us tremble, dim, and veer,

I pour my song forth of my soul
Within the realm where their life is
To mingle with their ecstasies.
And so take what I give; the whole
Of my adventure has for goal
To voice a glimpse of mysteries
That underprop the world, and ease
The heart when inner thunders gloom and roll.

These blossoms frail of scent and hue
In slender swaying growth have won
Some light of the unfading sun;
They grew in gardens which you knew
And precious substance deeply drew
From showers whose skies were overrun
By cloud-thoughts deftly made and spun
Of words your plenty overbrimmed and threw

Across our mind's horizon, fair
With sun that answered your clear spell,
And flooded river, hill, and dell.
These verses are swift flights that dare
The realm of the serener air;
I wooed them by the mystic well
Around whose murmurs subtly dwell
The spirits of the life beyond compare.

These narrow pathways haply lead
To heights wherefrom the truth is seen,
Life's luring, nay, compelling queen;
Small, rugged, though they be indeed
And overgrown by many a weed,
Perchance beneath the shadows green
Of tall and overarching treen
Some joy may make response to some dim need.

In music's noble-thoughted peace
We meet though distance' envious bar
Holds our fain hands asunder far;
In thought's soft-lumined high release
Our strengths abound, our souls increase;
Time has no might to maim or mar
With its divisions, since we are
Where tumults of the senses fail and cease.

Truth glows around us; we are one;
The past, the vanished, all are here;
The mists of the dream disappear,
The Ideal rises with its sun,
Life ever new yet unbegun
Receives us in its lofty sphere,
Whence fixed our hearts shall never veer,
Our journeyings surely overpast and done.