Page:The poems of George Eliot (Crowell, 1884).djvu/314

 And in creative vision wandered free.

Then Jubal, standing, rapturous arms upraised.

And on the dark with eager eyes he gazed,

As had some manifested god been there.

It was his thought he saw: the presence fair

Of unachieved achievement, the high task,

The struggling unborn spirit that doth ask

With irresistible cry for blood and breath,

Till feeding its great life we sink in death.

He said, "Were now those mighty tones and cries

That from the giant soul of earth arise,

Those groans of some great travail heard from far,

Some power at wrestle with the things that are,

Those sounds which vary with the varying form

Of clay and metal, and in sightless swarm

Fill the wide space with tremors: were these wed

To human voices with such passion fed

As does put glimmer in our common speech,

But might flame out in tones whose changing reach,

Surpassing meagre need, informs the sense

With fuller union, finer difference—

Were this great vision, now obscurely bright

As morning hills that melt in new-poured light,

Wrought into solid form and living sound,

Moving with ordered throb and sure rebound,

Then—Nay, I Jubal will that work begin!

The generations of our race shall win

New life, that grows from out the heart of this,

As spring from winter, or as lovers' bliss

From out the dull unknown of unwaked energies."

Thus he resolved, and in the soul-fed light

Of coming ages waited through the night,

Watching for that near dawn whose chiller ray