Collected Works (Vol. II)

24 ORACLES Stain not the planets, the unfathomed home, The spaceless, unformed faces in the dome Brighter and blacker than all things, Borne under the eternal wings No whither: solitary are the winter woods And caves not habited, And that supreme grey head Watching the groves: single the foaming amber floods, And O! most lone The melancholy mountain shrine and throne, While far above all things God sits, the ultimate alone ! Ill. I sate upon the mossy promontory Where the cascade cleft not his mother rock, But swept in whirlwind lightning foam and glory, Vast circling with unwearying luminous shock To lure and lock Marvellous eddies in its wild caress ; And there the solemn echoes caught the stress, The strain of that impassive tide, Shook. it and flung it high and wide, Till all the air took fire from that melodious roar ; All the mute mountains heard, Bowed, laughed aloud, concurred, And passed the word along, the signal of wide war. All earth took up the sound, And, being in one tune securely bound, Even as a star became the soul of silence most profound. IV. Thus there, the centre of that death that darkened, I sat and listened, if God’s voice should break . _And pierce the hollow of my ear that hearkened, Lest God should speak and find me not awake> For his own sake. No voice, no song might pierce or penetrate That enviable universal state. The sun and moon beheld, stood still. Only the spirit’s axis, will, Considered its own soul and sought a deadlier deep, And in its monotone mood Of supreme solitude Was neither glad nor sad because it did not sleep ; But with calm eyes abode Patient, its leisure the galactic load, Abode alone, nor even rejoiced to know that it was God. Vv. All change, all motion, and all sound, are weakness ! Man cannot bear the darkness which is death. Even that calm Christ, manifest in meekness, Cried on the cross and gave his ghostly breath, On the prick of death, Voice, for his passion could not bear nor dare The interlunar, the abundant air Darkened, and silence.on the shuddering Hill, and the unbeating wing Of the legions of His Father, and so died. But I, should I be still Poised between fear and will? Should I be silent, I, and be unsatisfied? For solitude shall bend Self to all selffulness, and have one friend, Self, and behold one God, and be, and look beyond the End. | VI. O Solitude ! how many have mistaken Thy name for Sorrow’s, or for Death's or Fear’s ! Only thy children lie at night and waken— How shouldst thou speak and say that no man hears? O Soul of Tears ! For never hath fallen as dew thy word, Nor is thy shape showed, nor as Wisdom’s heard 1 Via Lactea, the ‘‘ Milky Way,”