Page:The poems of George Eliot (Crowell, 1884).djvu/329

 Must lie in conscious trance, dumb, helpless lie

While all that ardent kindred passed him by?

His flesh cried out to live with living men

And join that soul which to the inward ken

Of all the hymning train was present there.

Strong passion's daring sees not aught to dare:

The frost-locked starkness of his frame low-bent,

His voice's penury of tones long spent,

He felt not; all his being leaped in flame

To meet his kindred as they onward came

Slackening and wheeling toward the temple's face:

He rushed before them to the glittering space.

And, with a strength that was but strong desire,

Cried, "I am Jubal, I! … I made the lyre!"

The tones amid a lake of silence fell

Broken and strained, as if a feeble bell

Had tuneless pealed the triumph of a land

To listening crowds in expectation spanned.

Sudden came showers of laughter on that lake;

They spread along the train from front to wake

In one great storm of merriment, while he

Shrank doubting whether he could Jubal be,

And not a dream of Jubal, whose rich vein

Of passionate music came with that dream-pain

Wherein the sense slips off from each loved thing

And all appearance is mere vanishing.

But ere the laughter died from out the rear,

Anger in front saw profanation near;

Jubal was but a name in each man's faith

For glorious power untouched by that slow death

Which creeps with creeping time; this too, the spot,

And this the day, it must be crime to blot.

Even with scoffing at a madman's lie:

Jubal was not a name to wed with mockery.