Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/79

FIN DE SIÈCLE With those high bards who lingering charmed the age

Ere one by one they joined the statued throng.

I hear the dirge for beauty sped, and faith

Astray in space and time's far archways lost,

Till Life itself becomes a tenuous wraith,

A wandering shade whom wandering shades accost.

Their light sad plaint I hear who thus divine

The future, counselling that all is done,—

Naught left for art's sweet touch—but to refine,

For courage—but to face the setting sun.

I hear, yet have no will to falter so.

We seek out matter's alchemy, and tame

Force to our needs, but what shall make us know

Whether the twain are parted, or the same?

The same! then conscious substance, fetterless

The more when most subdued to Will's control, 59