THE SWORD OF PAIN
37
I turned to Peace amid her olive trees:
Great cities rose before me, villages,
The spacious mansion and the lonely cot–
There was no door that Pain had entered not.
I heard like sobbings of an unseen tide
Its keen fire run through all things, and I
said:
"Peace masks a secret war on every side.
There is no rest from travail: God is dead."
Great cities rose before me, villages,
The spacious mansion and the lonely cot–
There was no door that Pain had entered not.
I heard like sobbings of an unseen tide
Its keen fire run through all things, and I
said:
"Peace masks a secret war on every side.
There is no rest from travail: God is dead."
No more the solid earth my footsteps prest;
The wide sky caught me upward to its breast.
The living ether seemed a quick'ning sea,
Where thrilled unseen the germs of worlds to be.
At times I seemed to move upon the verge
Of some vast viewless current streaming far,
And my brain quivered, as, with mighty surge,
Strange thought-waves swept the gulfs from star
to star.
The wide sky caught me upward to its breast.
The living ether seemed a quick'ning sea,
Where thrilled unseen the germs of worlds to be.
At times I seemed to move upon the verge
Of some vast viewless current streaming far,
And my brain quivered, as, with mighty surge,
Strange thought-waves swept the gulfs from star
to star.
In ordered majesty each System runs,
With mighty planets circling sovran suns,
And strange pale moons like ghosts that haunt the
scene
Of their once living glory; and serene,
With mighty planets circling sovran suns,
And strange pale moons like ghosts that haunt the
scene
Of their once living glory; and serene,
