Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/487

FIN DE SIÈCLE I hear the dirge for beauty sped, and faith

Astray in space and time's far archways lost,

Till Life itself becomes a tenuous wraith,

A wandering shade whom wandering shades accost.

Their light sad plaint I hear who thus divine

The future, counselling that all is done,—

Naught left for art's sweet touch—but to refine,

For courage—but to face the setting sun.

I hear, yet have no will to falter so.

We seek out matter's alchemy, and tame

Force to our needs, but what shall make us know

Whether the twain are parted, or the same?

The same! then conscious substance, fetterless

The more when most subdued to Will's control,

Free though in bonds, foredestined to progress,—

Ever, and ever still—the soul, the soul:

The unvexed spirit, to whose sure intent

All else is relative. Or large or small,

The Afrit, cloud or being, free or pent,

Enshrouds, impenetrates, and masters all.

No grain of sand too narrow to enfold

The spirit's incarnation; no vast land

And sea, but, readjusted to their mould,

It deems Atlantis scarce a grain of sand.

Time's intervals are ages; planets sleep

In death, or blaze in living light afar;

Thought answers thought; deep calleth unto deep

Alike within the globule and the star.

Ay, even the rock-bound globe, which still doth feign

Itself inanimate, itself shall seem

From yonder void a bead upon the train

Of heaven's warder rayed with beam on beam.

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