Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/486

VARIOUS POEMS What the heart hungered for and was denied,

Still foiled with guerdons for a world to see

And envy it,—this furrows deep and wide

Its grooves in thee—in me.

Borne, always borne—what martyrdoms assoil

The laden soul from hostile chance and blind?

Nor time can loose the adamantine coil,

Nor Azrael unbind.

Redemption for the priest! but naught their gain

Who forfeit still the one thing asked of Earth,

Knowing all penance light beside this pain—

All pleasure, nothing worth.

FIN DE SIÈCLE

making exit to the outer vast

Our century speeds, and shall retain no more

Its perihelion splendor, save to cast

A search-light on the chartless course before.

I hear the murmur of our kind, whose eyes

Follow the spread of that phantasmal ray;

Who see as infants see, nor can surmise

Aright of what is near—what far away.

I hear the jest, the threnody, the low

Recount of dreams which down the years have fled,—

Of fair romance now shattered with love's bow,

Of legend brought to test, and passion dead.

Dark Science broods in Fancy's hermitage,

The rainbow fades,—and hushed, they say, is Song

With those high bards who lingering charmed the age

Ere one by one they joined the statued throng.

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