Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/125

 shriek to live, but no man ever lives Till he has rid the ghost of human breath; We dream to die, but no man ever dies Till he has quit the road that runs to death.

a torrent falling in a glen Where the sun's light shone silvered and leaf-split; The boom, the foam, and the mad flash of it All made a magic symphony; but when I thought upon the coming of hard men To cut those patriarchal trees away, And turn to gold the silver of that spray, I shuddered. Yet a gladness now and then Did wake me to myself till I was glad In earnest, and was welcoming the time For screaming saws to sound above the chime Of idle waters, and for me to know The jealous visionings that I had had Were steps to the great place where trees and torrents go.

Now in a thought, now in a shadowed word, Now in a voice that thrills eternity, Ever there comes an onward phrase to me Of some transcendent music I have heard; No piteous thing by soft hands dulcimered, No trumpet crash of blood-sick victory, But a glad strain of some vast harmony That no brief mortal touch has ever stirred.