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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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