Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/233

ARIEL Wild requiem of the heart whose vibratings,

With laughter fraught, and tears,

Beat through the century's dying years

While for one more dark round the old Earth plumes her wings.

No answer came to thee; from ether fell

No voice, no radiant beam; and in thy youth

How were it else, when still the oracle

Withholds its truth?

We sit in judgment,—we, above thy page

Judge thee and such as thee,

Pale heralds, sped too soon to see

The marvels of our late yet unanointed age!

The slaves of air and light obeyed afar

Thy summons, Ariel; their elf-horns wound

Strange notes which all uncapturable are

Of broken sound.

That music thou alone couldst rightly hear

(O rare impressionist!)

And mimic. Therefore still we list

To its ethereal fall in this thy cyclic year.

Be then the poet's poet still! for none

Of them whose minstrelsy the stars have blessed

Has from expression's wonderland so won

The unexpressed,—

So wrought the charm of its elusive note

On us, who yearn in vain

To mock the pæan and the plain

Of tides that rise and fall with sweet mysterious rote.

Was it not well that the prophetic few,

So long inheritors of that high verse,

Dwelt in the mount alone, and haply knew

What stars rehearse? 203