Page:The Man Who Died Twice (1924).djvu/82

 Was daring to be free. But freedom wavered

Out of the voices that were praising it;

And while it wavered, the lean hand of Death

Beat with a desperate malevolence,

More sinister in its evil emptiness

Than when that carnal chorus of the dead,

With corybantic and infatuate glee

Had howled it out of hearing—till once more

There were those golden trumpets, and at last

There was that choral golden overflow

Of sound and fire, which he had always heard—

And had not heard before. Now it had come,

And had not gone. Nothing had gone that came.

All he had known and had not waited for

Was his; and having it, he could not wait now.

With blinding tears of praise and of exhaustion

Pouring out of his eyes and over his cheeks,