Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/209

CORDA CONCORDIA Some brave discovery,

Howbeit in vain we try

To clutch the shape that lures us evermore,

It shall be ours to make,—

As, where the waters break

Upon the margin of a pathless shore,

They find, who sought for gold alone,

The sudden wonders of a clime unknown.

Such treasure by the way

Your errantry shall pay,

Nor shall it aught against your hope prevail

That not to waking eyes

The golden clouds arise

Wherewith our visions clothe the mystic Grail,

When, in blithe halts upon the road,

We sleep where pilgrims earlier gone abode.

After the twelvemonth set

When as of old they met,

(A twelvemonth and a day, and kept their tryst,)

And knight to pilgrim told

Things given them to behold,

What country found, what gained of all they wist,

(While ministering hands assign

To each a share of healing food and wine,)

So come,—when long grass waves

Above the holiest graves

Of them whose ripe adventure chides our own,—

Come where the great elms lean

Their quivering leaves and green

To shade the moss-clung roofs now sacred grown,

And where the bronze and granite tell

How Liberty was hailed with Life's farewell.

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