THE HIDDEN WEAVER

There where he sits in the cold, in the gloom,

Of his far-away place by his thundering loom,

He weaves on the shuttles of day and of night

The shades of our sorrow and shapes of delight.

He has wrought him a glimmering garment to fling

Over the sweet swift limbs of the Spring,

He has woven a fabric of wonder to be

For a blue and a billowy robe to the sea,

He has fashioned in sombre funereal dyes

A tissue of gold for the midnight skies.

But sudden the woof turns all to red.

Has he lost his craft? Has he snapped his thread?

Sudden the web all sanguine runs.

Does he hear the yell of the thirsting guns?

While the scarlet crimes and the crimson sins

Grow from the dizzying outs and ins

Of the shuttle that spins, does he see it and feel?

Or is he the slave of a tyrannous wheel?

Inscrutable faces, mysterious eyes,

Are watching him out of the drifting skies;

Exiles of chaos crowd through the gloom

Of the uttermost cold to that thundering room

And whisper and peer through the dusk to mark

What thing he is weaving there in the dark.

Will he leave the loom that he won from them

And rend his fabric from hem to hem?

Is he weaving with daring and skill sublime

A wonderful winding-sheet for time?

Ah, but he sits in a darkling place,

Hiding his hands, hiding his face,

Hiding his art behind the shine

Of the web that he weaves so long and fine.

Loudly the great wheel hums and rings

And we hear not even the song that he sings.

Over the whirr of the shuttles and all

The roar and the rush, does he hear when we call?

Only the colors that grow and glow

Swift as the hurrying shuttles go,

Only the figures vivid or dim

That flow from the hastening hands of him,

Only the fugitive shapes are we,

Wrought in the web of eternity.