Page:Songs of Rebellion (Hall 1915).djvu/21

 THE DREAMER He walks the Vale of Silence, yet in Silence, lo, he hears The harmonies of Nature and the music of the Spheres; Amid the passing Shows and Shadows, he, alone, is free, For he, alone, is close enough the Hidden Heart to see.

His path may stretch down valleys where eternal Sorrow reigns; The angels, Sin and Sadness, leave upon his soul their stains; And o'er his spirit's altars Fate may draw the veil of night, But never is he blinded to the pure, unblemished light.

Alone, alone and desolate, far fares his soul away, Yet on the Pinnacles of Gloom he finds the Star of Day; And in the wildest wilderness, beside Life's bitter springs, He hears Hope's silver laughter and the murmur of her wings.

For him there is no Eden, yet the world owes all to him, For he beheld the Vision when the World-eye still was dim; A beggar in the court of Love, an outcast from the Shrine, He taught the world Love's lesson, and he made it all divine.

Out in the lonely gardens, of the long and lonely years, He wrung the fruit of Knowledge from the upas tree of Tears; His was the mind that 'wakened all the golden dreams of youth, And his eye that first beheld the signals of the Truth.

And they who followed after, where his bleeding footsteps trod, And walked upon the roses he had strewn upon the sod, They reaped the fruit he planted and the grain that he had sown, And Lethe softly ripples o'er a grave forgot, unknown. —15—