Tower of Ivory/Immortality
IMMORTALITY
I
As it hath been, it shall be evermore.
The shadow of the dawning future creeps
Across the drowsy dial-face, and sweeps
The graven numbers marked and told before
By old forgotten hours. So ever o'er
The paths of yesterday to-morrow keeps
A slow insistent course, and evening reaps
Eternity on every sunset shore.
From slumber into slumber all things go;
Our yesterday is dawned from infinite
Oblivion; to-morrow's fading light
Shall darken to that misted morn, and lo!
No terror clothes the oblivion we know.
Breathe deep the gloaming of death's second night.
IMMORTALITY
II
Since Golgotha the learned doctors prate
Of peace and easeful immortality,
As if strange fruit of that accursed tree
Had bloomed and withered but to dissipate
Old fears, and that a glutton world might sate
Eternal longings with eternity—
A world content the cross of Christ should be
Its suffering and death impersonate.
Ah, Lord, wouldst Thou we let Thy blood redeem,
Thy torture comfort, and Thy sorrow save?
Or, restless, labor with the soul God gave,
Aspire and suffer, follow beauty's gleam,
Endure the barren agony of dream,
And win brief life—not freedom from the grave?
IMMORTALITY
III
Nay, I have lived before, and otherwhere
Have lolled against the breast of God's Unseen,
And watched Infinities of Things careen
With shouted laughter down the startled air,
And caught the Truth by his entangled hair,
And plucked at Beauty's burnished wing to preen
A broken feather from its golden sheen,
And smiled with Love, slow walking, white in vair.
How else—when you come running to surprise
My heart with sudden arms about my throat,
And laugh with such a wishful little note—
How else am I, Love's acolyte, so wise
To know that dreams and passion turned devote,
And joy grown sad, are Love with wide girl's eyes?