Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/207

CORDA CONCORDIA So let our defter art

Probe the warm brain, and part

Each convolution of the trembling shell:

But whither now has fled

The sense to matter wed

That murmured here? All silence, such as fell

When to the shrine beyond the Ark

The soldiers reached, and found it void and dark.

Seek elsewhere, and in vain

The wings of morning chain;

Their speed transmute to fire, and bring the Light,

The co-eternal beam

Of the blind minstrel's dream;

But think not that bright heat to know aright,

Nor how the trodden seed takes root,

Waked by its glow, and climbs to flower and fruit.

Behind each captured law

Weird shadows give us awe;

Press with your swords, the phantoms still evade;

Through our alertest host

Wanders at ease some ghost,

Now here, now there, by no enchantment laid,

And works upon our souls its will,

Leading us on to subtler mazes still.

We think, we feel, we are;

And light, as of a star,

Gropes through the mist,—a little light is given;

And aye from life and death

We strive, with indrawn breath,

To somehow wrest the truth, and long have striven,

Nor pause, though book and star and clod

Reply, Canst thou by searching find out God?

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