Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/488

VARIOUS POEMS Life, when the harper tunes his shrillest string,

As to low thunder lends a finer ear

Unseen. Niagara's slow vibrating

Is but the treble of the greater sphere,

Whose lightest orchestras such movements play

As mock the forest's moan, the bass profound

Of surges that against deep barriers stay

Their might, in throes which shake the ancient ground.

Will, consciousness, the tenant lord of all,

Self-tenanted, is still the wrinkled wave

Which climbs a wave upon the clambering wall

Beyond, or in the hollow seeks a grave.

We time the ray, we pulsate with the fling

Of ether—feel the sure magnetic thrill

Make answer to each sombre vortex ring

Whirled with the whirling sun that binds us still;

That binds us, bound itself from girth to pole

By some unconquerable deathless force

Akin to this which thinks, acts, feels,—the soul

Of man, forever eddying like its source.

Passion and jest, the laugh and wail of earth,

High thought and speech, the rare considerings

Of beauty that to fairer art gives birth,

The winnowing of poesy's swift wings,—

These—though the hoary century inurn

Our great—no gathering mould of time shall clod:

They bide their hour, they pass but to return

With men, as now, the progeny of God.

1892.

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