Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/208

POEMS OF OCCASION As from the hollow deep

The soul's strong tide must keep

Its purpose still. We rest not, though we hear

No voice from heaven let fall,

No chant antiphonal

Sounding through sunlit clefts that open near;

We look not outward, but within,

And think not quite to end as we begin.

For now the questioning age

Cries to each hermitage,

Cease not to ask,—or bring again the time

When the young world's belief

Made light the mourner's grief

And strong the sage's word, the poet's rhyme,—

Ere Knowledge thrust a spear-head through

The temple's veil that priest so closely drew.

From what our fate inurns—

Save that which music yearns

To speak, in ecstasy none understand,

And (Oh, how like to it!)

The half-formed rays that flit,

Like memories vague, above the further land—

Cry, as the star-led Magi cried,

We seek, we seek, we will not be denied!

Let the blind throng await

A healer at the gate;

Our hearts press on to see what yonder lies,

Knowing that arch on arch

Shall loom across the march

And over portals gained new strongholds rise.

The search itself a glory brings,

Though foiled so oft, that seeks the soul of things.

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