This quick, this absolute estate._

Nay, who would sing in heaven,
Among the choral Seven
That hears--as Love and I have heard,
The whole sky listening to one bird?
_And where's the ruby, tell me where,
Whose crimsons for one breath compare
With this wild rose that all may share?_

THE TRUMPET OF THE LAW

(_Phi Beta Kappa Poem, Harvard, 1915_)

Music is dead. An age, an age is dying.
Shreds of Uranian song, wild symphonies
Tortured with moans of butchered innocents,
Blow past us on the wind. Chaos resumes
His kingdom. All the visions of the world,
The visions that were music, being shaped
By law, moving in measure, treading the road
That suns and systems tread, O who can hear
Their music now? Urania bows her head.
Only the feet that move in order dance.
Only the mind attuned to that dread pulse
Of law throughout the universe can sing.
Only the soul that plays its rhythmic part
In that great measure of the tides and suns
Terrestrial and celestial, till it soar
Into the supreme melodies of heaven,
Only that soul, climbing the splendid road
Of law from height to height, may walk with God,
Shape its own sphere from chaos, conquer death,
Lay hold on life and liberty, and sing.

Yet, since, at least, the fleshly heart must beat
In measure, and no new rebellion breaks
That old restriction, murmurs reach it still,
Rumours of that vast music which resolves
Our discords, and to this, to this attuned,
Though blindly, it responds, in notes like these:

There was a song in heaven of old,
A song the choral seven began,
When God with all his chariots rolled
The tides of chaos back for man;
When suns revolved and planets wheeled,
And the great oceans ebbed and flowed,
There is one way of life, it pealed,
The road of law, the unchanging road.

The trumpet of the law resounds,
And we behold, from depth to height,
What glittering sentries walk their rounds,
What ordered hosts patrol the night,
While wheeling worlds proclaim to us,
Captained by Thee thro' nights unknown,--
_Glory that would be glorious
Must keep Thy law to find its own._

Beyond rebellion, past caprice,
From heavens that comprehend all change,
All space, all time, till time shall cease,
The trumpet rings to souls that range,
To souls that in wild dreams annu