SEARCHINGS.

Soul, thou hast lived before. Thy wing

Hath swept the ancient folds of light

Which once wrapt stilly everything,

Before the advent of a Night.

O thou art blind and thou art dead

Unto the knowledge that was thine.

A longing and a dreamy dread

Alone oft shadow the divine.

Full loud calls past eternity,

But Lethe's murmur stills its roar,

The one vague truth that reaches thee

Is this — that thou hast lived before.

Home often comes some voice of eld

Confused and low — a broken surge

By fate and distance half withheld —

Rich in linked sadness like a dirge.

The muffled, great bell Silence clangs

His solemn call, and thou, O soul!

Dost stir in sense's torpid fangs,

Like the blind magnet, toward a pole.

The deep, vast, swelling organ-sound;

The cadence of an evening flute,

Bring oft those ancient joys around

To linger till the notes are mute.

And when thy hushéd breathing fills

The shrine of quiet reverence,

Then, too, a freeing angel stills

The clanking of the chains of sense.

But nearest to that former life

Another power calleth thee,

Away from care, away from strife,

Toward what thou wast — infinity.

And in thee, soul, the deepest chord

Thrills to a strain rung from above;

That strain is bound within a word,

A sole, sweet word, and it is — Love.

Love — yet it cannot set thee free

To sweep again those folds of light,

It torches but a part to thee

And dim, though fair. The rest is night.

As the fine structure of a man

Fits into life's great world, foremade,

So too it shadoweth the plan

Of ages hidden in the shade.

And thou hast lived before; hast known

The depth of every mystery,

Has dwelt in Nature, hid, alone

And winged the blue ætherial sea;

Hast looked upon the ends of space;

Hast visited each rolling star,—

Before Time measured forth his pace,

Scythe-armed, on a terrestrial war.