Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/125

 CORDA CONCORDIA

READ AT THE OPENING SESSION OF THE SUMMER SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY, CONCORD, JULY 11, 1881

No sandalled footsteps fall,

Tablet and coronal

From the Cephissian grove have vanished long,

Yet in the sacred dale

Still bides the nightingale

Easing his ancient heart-break still with song;

Or is there some dim audience

Viewless to all save his unclouded sense?

Revisit now those glades

The stately mantled shades

Whose lips so wear the inexorable spell?

Saying, with heads sunk low,

All that we sought, we know,—

We know, but not to mrtal ears may tell:

No answer unto man's desire

Shall thus be made, to quench his eager fire.

105