The music falters on the harp of gold;
That which it longs to say is never told:
Stern silence now indraws it evermore.
The thought which scarcely to the heart before
Was half so keenly or so highly given,
Once and for all to speak the heart has striven;
Once and for all the heart has failed therein.
The word and music of the word begin,
But cannot finish; yet the soul shall see;
Light in the soul shall dawn, that light shall be
Extended surely through the great domain,
Nor towards the summits turn her eyes in vain —
Far end, perchance, but still she sees the end.
Clouds intervene indeed and veils extend,
But gifted inly by those ardent rays —
Clouds and the veils thereof before the gaze
Of soul dissolving — shall the soul descry
That which is hidden from the fleshly eye,
The end and high significance of things.
Of old, great Plato said the soul has wings,
And deem not thou that ne'er the soul has risen,
Flame-wing'd, above the ramparts of her prison.
Think not with bolts and bars she strives in vain,
Who can at need the path of stars attain;
Yet it remains that, stars and heights explored,
Or wheresoe'er the soul has plunged and soar'd,
In deep abysses or on holy hill,
The secret baffles and eludes her still.
Made subject now to terms of time and space,
Drawn by the outward, not the inward place,
She chiefly shares the public pomps and shows:
Therein no star as star that secret knows,
Nor sun divines it. Earth has mighty themes
To guard our sleeping and our waking dreams;
The peaks have ravishment; the great sea-deep
Has other mysteries, to yield or keep;
Those which we lack, the meaning and the goal,
Exceed their depth and height. And hence the soul,
By outward witcheries encompass'd, sees
The glory and the glamour which are these:
She listens, she divines as best she can,
And gathers something of the cosmic plan,
While from the snatches of the secret caught —
Beyond the limit of the world of thought
Withdrawn in regions of which none can tell —
She fashions answers in an oracle
And burning prophecies which inly stir:
She fashions answers, nothing answers her.
Therefore of how it shall at length befall,
The hidden meaning and the end of all —
Life's crown therein — are hidden from the soul,
Which gleans in part but cannot grasp the whole.
Some voices truly at her door have sung,
But in an unintelligible tongue;
And flashes sometimes from her centre strike
Which seem to shew her what the end is like,
As if the centre and the end were there.
Such lesson haply might her labours spare:
That which can answer nothing, or, if heard,
Only some unintelligible word,
Serving for presage in divining art,
May after all have little to impart;
But in the soul herself, if deeply sought,
Will come an answer to our inmost thought.
Let therefore music fail from harps of gold;
Let words be kept within the heart untold;
And let the soul no longer use her wings
For ranging through the outward scheme of things,
But inward turn the light of shining eyes —
Be sure, the end is there, the meaning wise.
That which it longs to say is never told:
Stern silence now indraws it evermore.
The thought which scarcely to the heart before
Was half so keenly or so highly given,
Once and for all to speak the heart has striven;
Once and for all the heart has failed therein.
The word and music of the word begin,
But cannot finish; yet the soul shall see;
Light in the soul shall dawn, that light shall be
Extended surely through the great domain,
Nor towards the summits turn her eyes in vain —
Far end, perchance, but still she sees the end.
Clouds intervene indeed and veils extend,
But gifted inly by those ardent rays —
Clouds and the veils thereof before the gaze
Of soul dissolving — shall the soul descry
That which is hidden from the fleshly eye,
The end and high significance of things.
Of old, great Plato said the soul has wings,
And deem not thou that ne'er the soul has risen,
Flame-wing'd, above the ramparts of her prison.
Think not with bolts and bars she strives in vain,
Who can at need the path of stars attain;
Yet it remains that, stars and heights explored,
Or wheresoe'er the soul has plunged and soar'd,
In deep abysses or on holy hill,
The secret baffles and eludes her still.
Made subject now to terms of time and space,
Drawn by the outward, not the inward place,
She chiefly shares the public pomps and shows:
Therein no star as star that secret knows,
Nor sun divines it. Earth has mighty themes
To guard our sleeping and our waking dreams;
The peaks have ravishment; the great sea-deep
Has other mysteries, to yield or keep;
Those which we lack, the meaning and the goal,
Exceed their depth and height. And hence the soul,
By outward witcheries encompass'd, sees
The glory and the glamour which are these:
She listens, she divines as best she can,
And gathers something of the cosmic plan,
While from the snatches of the secret caught —
Beyond the limit of the world of thought
Withdrawn in regions of which none can tell —
She fashions answers in an oracle
And burning prophecies which inly stir:
She fashions answers, nothing answers her.
Therefore of how it shall at length befall,
The hidden meaning and the end of all —
Life's crown therein — are hidden from the soul,
Which gleans in part but cannot grasp the whole.
Some voices truly at her door have sung,
But in an unintelligible tongue;
And flashes sometimes from her centre strike
Which seem to shew her what the end is like,
As if the centre and the end were there.
Such lesson haply might her labours spare:
That which can answer nothing, or, if heard,
Only some unintelligible word,
Serving for presage in divining art,
May after all have little to impart;
But in the soul herself, if deeply sought,
Will come an answer to our inmost thought.
Let therefore music fail from harps of gold;
Let words be kept within the heart untold;
And let the soul no longer use her wings
For ranging through the outward scheme of things,
But inward turn the light of shining eyes —
Be sure, the end is there, the meaning wise.