THE STRONG MAN TO HIS SIRES

Tonight as I was riding on a wave

Of triumph and of glory,

A Question suddenly, as from the grave,

Rose in me, culpatory.

“Whence come to you this joyance and this strength”

It said, “this might of vision?

This will that measures all things to its length,

That cuts with calm decision?

“This blood within your veins, that is as wine

Which Destiny's self blesses.

Whence flows it, from what grape that is divine,

Or trodden from what presses?

“Do you so proud forget what hands have borne

You to the heights and crowned you?

Would you behold what sackcloth has been worn

That laurels may surround you?”...

“I would — O lips invisible! whose breath” —

I answered — “so arraigns me;

Whose voice is as a sound sent forth of Death,

And like to Death entrains me.

“I would! For if the flesh of me and soul

Are fibred with the ages,

My triumph is of them and manifold

Of all life's mystic stages.”

So, forth they came — a vast ancestral line,

Upon my vision teeming,

All shapes whose natal semblance could affine

Them to me, faintly gleaming.

I knew them as I knew myself, and felt

The Day of each within me;

And so began to speak, the while they dwelt

About — they who had been me.

“My Sires,” I said, “think you I have forgot

The fervor of your living?

How into me is moulded all you thought.

Of getting or of giving?

“Think you I do not feel my every drop

Of blood is as an ocean

In which are surging and will never stop

All things your hope gave motion?

“My senses, that are swift to take delight

And shrine it in their being,

Are they not born of all your faith, and bright

With all your bliss of seeing?

“And my full heart within whose fount I hear

Your voices that are vanished,

Can it forget its gratitude or fear

Foes that you braved and banished?

“No. But the blindly striving years that led

You to the Rose's beauty,

Or taught you out of Ill to disembed

The golden veins of Duty;

“The wasting and incalculable wants

That in you quailed or quivered;

The longing that lit stars no dark now daunts —

I know, who stand delivered!

“To you then from whose throng the centuries

Long dead slip now their shrouding,

Who from oblivion's profundities

Rise up, and round are crowding,

“I say, Immortal do I hold your will!

Its gathered might ascending

Is sacred with the unconquerable might

Of God — who sees its ending;

“Of God — on whose strong Vine, Heredity,

Rooted in Voids primeval,

The world climbs ever to some great To-Be

Of passion or reprieval.”

I said — and on night's infinite beheld

Silence alone beside me;

And majesty of greater meanings welled

Into my soul, to guide me.