28 The Two Voices. Like an Æolian harp, that wakes Far thought with music that it makes, Such seemed the whisper at my side: "What is 't thou know'st, sweet voice?" I cried. "A hidden hope," the voice replied: So heavenly-toned, that in that hour To feel, although no tongue can prove, And forth into the fields I went, I wondered at the bounteous hours, I wondered, while I paced along: The Two Voices. So variously seemed all things wrought, And wherefore rather I made choice 3 29 LIFE SHALL LIVE FOR EVERMORE. My own dim life should teach me this, Else earth is darkness at the core, And dust and ashes all that is: This round of green, this orb of flame, In some wild Poet, when he works What then were God to such as I? 'T were hardly worth my while to choose Of things all mortal, or to use A little patience ere I die. 'T were best at once to sink to peace; Like birds the charming serpent draws, Of vacant darkness, and to cease. Life shall Live Forever. YET if some voice that man could trust Should murmur from the narrow house, "The cheeks drop in; the body bows; Man dies; nor is there hope in dust": Might I not say, "Yet even here, But for one hour, O Love, I strive To keep so sweet a thing alive"? But I should turn mine ears and hear The moanings of the homeless sea, The sound of streams that, swift or slow, The dust of continents to be: And Love would answer with a sigh, "The sound of that forgetful shore 31 Will change my sweetness more and more, Half dead to know that I shall die." Oh me, what profits it to put An idle case! If Death were seen At first as Death, Love had not been, Or been in narrowest working shut, Mere fellowship of sluggish moods, Or, in his coarsest satyr-shape, Had bruised the herb and crushed the grape, And basked and battened in the woods. EVIL SHALL END IN GOOD. OH, yet we trust that somehow good Το pangs of nature, sins of will, That nothing walks with aimless feet; That not a worm is cloven in vain ; Behold, we know not anything; And every winter change to spring. |