whose natal semblance could affine
Them to me, faintly gleaming.
I knew them as I knew myself, and felt
The Day of each within me;
And so began to speak, the while they dwelt
About--they who had been me.
"My Sires," I said, "think you I have forgot
The fervor of your living?
How into me is moulded all you thought.
Of getting or of giving?
"Think you I do not feel my every drop
Of blood is as an ocean
In which are surging and will never stop
All things your hope gave motion?
"My senses, that are swift to take delight
And shrine it in their being,
Are they not born of all your faith, and bright
With all your bliss of seeing?
"And my full heart within whose fount I hear
Your voices that are vanished,
Can it forget its gratitude or fear
Foes that you braved and banished?
"No. But the blindly striving years that led
You to the Rose's beauty,
Or taught you out of Ill to disembed
The golden veins of Duty;
"The wasting and incalculable wants
That in you quailed or quivered;
The longing that lit stars no dark now daunts--
_I know, who stand delivered!_
"To you then from whose throng the centuries
Long dead slip now their shrouding,
Who from oblivion's profundities
Rise up, and round are crowding,
"I say, Immortal do I hold your will!
Its gathered might ascending
Is sacred with the unconquerable might
Of God--who sees its ending;
"Of God--on whose strong Vine, Heredity,
Rooted in Voids primeval,
The world climbs ever to some great To-Be
Of passion or reprieval."
I said--and on night's infinite beheld
Silence alone beside me;
And majesty of greater meanings welled
Into my soul, to guide me.
AT STRATFORD
I could not sleep. The wind poured in my ear
Immortal names--Lear, Hamlet, Hal, Macbeth,
And thro the night I heard the rushing breath
Of ghost and witch and fool go whirling by.
I followed them, under the phantom sphere
Of the pale moon, along the Avon's near
And nimbused flowing, followed to his bier--
Who had evoked them first with mighty eye.
And as I gazed upon the peaceful spire
That points above earth's most immortal dust,
I could have asked God for His starry Lyre
Out of the skies to play my praise upon.
I could have shouted, as, O Wind, thou must,
"Here lies Humanity: kneel, and pass on."
TH
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