Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/78

 FIN DE SlÈCLE

making exit to the outer vast

Our century speeds, and shall retain no more

Its perihelion splendor, save to cast

A search-light on the chartless course before.

I hear the murmur of our kind, whose eyes

Follow the spread of that phantasmal ray;

Who see as infants see, nor can surmise

Aright of what is near—what far away.

I hear the jest, the threnody, the low

Recount of dreams which down the years have fled,—

Of fair romance now shattered with love's bow,

Of legend brought to test, and passion dead.

Dark Science broods in Fancy's hermitage,

The rainbow fades,—and hushed, they say, is Song 58