Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/409

Rh Opening the book my gaze fell on that line

Wherein the marvelous poet, the divine

Singer of Endymion, his deathless song

Began, and so beginning made immortal.

O dead, undying bard! now all the wrong

Fate did thee rose; through Memory's drapèd portal

Trooped, in wan figures, all thy tragic story—

But mightier still the wonder and the glory

Of that white page whereon thy soul was poured.

Then with thy spirit my spirit likewise soared;

Something immortal entered in this breast

Miraculously; and like one confessed

And throughly shriven, back to the world I turned

While a new heart within me flamed and burned.

And yet that morn, when grew the glare and din,

The day began, as other days begin.

A POET'S QUESTION