MORS TRIUMPHALIS

These ills another, cruel, monstrous, worse

Than all before thy pure and passionate love
Shall bring the old, immitigable curse."

45

"And thou, who tell'st me this, dost bid me sing?"

"I bid thee sing, even tho' I have not told
All the deep flood of anguish shall be rolled
Across thy breast. Nor, Poet, shalt thou bring
From out those depths thy grief! Tell to the wind
Thy private woes, but not to human ear,
Save in the shape of comfort for thy kind.
But never hush thy song, dare not to cease
While life is thine. Haply, 'mid those who hear,
Thy music to one soul shall murmur peace,
Tho' for thyself it hath no power to cheer.

"Then shall thy still unbroken spirit grow
Strong in its silent suffering and more wise;
And, - as the drenched and thunder-shaken skies
Pass into golden sunset, thou shalt know
An end of calm, when evening breezes blow;
And, looking on thy life with vision fine,
Shalt see the shadow of a hand divine.”

MORS TRIUMPHALIS

I

In the hall of the king the loud mocking of many at one; While lo! with his hand on his harp the old bard is undone! One false note, then he stammers, he sobs like a child, he is failing,

And the song that so bravely began ends in discord and

wailing.

II

Can it be it is they who make merry, 't is they taunting him?

Shall the sun, then, be scorned by the planets, the tree by the limb!

These bardlings, these mimics, these echoes, these shadows at play,

While he only is real; - they shine but as motes in his

day!

III

All that in them is best is from him; all they know he has

taught;

But one secret he never could teach, and they never have

caught

The soul of his songs, that goes sighing like wind through

the reeds,

And thrills men, and moves them to terror, to prayer, and to deeds.

IV

Has the old poet failed, then the singer forgotten his

art?

Why, 't was he who once startled the world with a cry from his heart;

And he held it entranced in a life-song, all music, all love; If now it grow faint and grow still, they have called him above.

V

Ah, never again shall we hear such fierce music and

Surely never from you, ye who mock, for his footstool

unmeet;

MORS TRIUMPHALIS

47

E'en his song left unsung had more power than the note

ye prolong,

And one sweep of his harp-strings outpassioned the hight of your song.

VI

But a sound like the voice of the pine, like the roar of the

sea

Arises. He breathes now; he sings; O, again he is

free.

He has flung from his flesh, from his spirit, their shackles

accurst,

And he pours all his heart, all his life, in one passionate burst.

VII

And now as he chants those who listen turn pale, are

afraid;

For he sings of a God that made all, and is all that was

made;

Who is maker of love, and of hate, and of peace, and of

strife;

Smiles a heaven into being; frowns a hell, that yet thrills with His life.

VIII

And he sings of the time that shall be when the earth is grown old;

Of the day when the sun shall be withered, and shrunken,

and cold;

When the stars, and the moon, and the sun, all their glory o'erpast,

Like apples that shrivel and rot, shall drop into the

Vast.

IX

And onward and out soars his song on its journey sub

lime,

'Mid systems that vanish or live in the lilt of his rhyme; And through making and marring of races, and worlds, still he sings

One theme, that o'er all and through all his wild music outrings

X

This one theme: that whate'er be the fate that has hurt us or joyed;

Whatever the face that is turned to us out of the void; Be it cursing or blessing; or night, or the light of the

sun;

Be it ill, be it good; be it life, be it death, it is ONE;

ΧΙ

One thought, and one law, and one awful and infinite

power;

In atom, and world; in the bursting of fruit and of

flower;

The laughter of children, and roar of the lion untamed; And the stars in their courses one name that can never

be named.

XII

But sudden a silence has fallen, the music has fled;
Tho' he leans with his hand on his harp, now indeed

he is dead;

But the swan-song he sang shall for ever and ever abide In the heart of the world, with the winds and the murmuring tide.

A CHRISTMAS HYMN

49

THE MASTER-POETS

HE the great World-Musician at whose stroke
The stars of morning into music broke;

He from whose Being Infinite are caught

All harmonies of light, and sound, and thought-
Once in each age, to keep the world in tune,
He strikes a note sublime. Nor late, nor soon,
A godlike soul, music and passion's birth,-
Vibrates across the discord of the earth

And sets the world aright.

O, these are they

Who on men's hearts with mightiest power can play

The master-poets of humanity,

From heaven sent down to lift men to the sky.

PART II

A CHRISTMAS HYMN

I

TELL me what is this innumerable throng
Singing in the heavens a loud angelic song?

These are they who come with swift and shining feet
From round about the throne of God the Lord of Light
to greet.

II

O, who are these that hasten beneath the starry sky,
As if with joyful tidings that through the world shall fly?

The faithful shepherds these, who greatly were afeared
When, as they watched their flocks by night, the heav-
enly host appeared.