YE WHO ARE TO SING

O silence of all silences, where wait

Fame's unblown years whose choir my soul would greet!

Graves, nor dead Time, are sealed so dumb in fate,

For Death and Time must pass on echoing feet.

No grass-locked vault, no sculptured winding-sheet,

No age-embalmèd hour with mummied wing,

Is bosomed in such stillness, vast, complete,

As wraps the future, and no prayer may bring

From that unfathomed pause one minstrel murmuring.

Yet never earth a lyreless dawn shall know;

No moon shall move unharped to her pale home;

No midnight wreathe its chain of choric glow

But answering eye flash rhythmic to the dome.

No path shall lie too deep in forest gloam

For the blithe singer's tread; no winds fore'er

Blow lute-lorn barks o'er unawakened foam;

Nor hidden isle sleep so enwaved but there

Shall touch and land at last Apollo's mariner.

And soon shall wake that morrow's melody,

When men of labour shall be men of dream,

With hand seer-guided, knowing Deity

That breathes in sonant wood and fluting stream,

Shapes too the wheel, the shaft, the shouldering beam,

Nor ceased to build when Magian toil began

To lift its towered world. What chime supreme

Shall turn our tuneless march to music when

Sings the achieving God in conscious hearts of men!

And one voice shall be woman's, lifting lay

Till all the lark-heights of her being ring;

Majestic she shall take the chanted way,

And every song-peak's golden bourgeoning

Shall thrill beneath her feet that lyric spring

From ventured crest to crest. Strong, masterless,

She, last in freedom, as the first shall sing,

Who, great in freedom, takes by Love her place,

Wife, mother,— more, her starward moving self — the race.

Ay, ye shall come, ye spirits girt with light

That falls o'er heaven's hills from dawn to be;

Ye warders in the planet house of night,

Gliding to unguessed doors with prophet key,

And out where dim paths stir with minstrelsy

Wordless and strange to man until your clear

Doubt-shriven strain interprets to the clay.

Oh, might I hear ye as the world shall hear,

Nearer, a poet's journey, to the Golden Year!

Dear, honoured bards of centuries dim and sped,

Yet glowing ever in your fadeless song,

No dust shall heap its silence o'er ye dead,

No cadent seas shall drown your chorus strong

In more melodious waves. I've lingered long

By your brave harps strung for eternity;

But now runs my wild heart to meet the throng

Who yet shall choir. O wondrous company,

If graves may listen then, I then shall listening be!