Mystic because too cheaply understood; Dark sayings are not ours; men hear and know, See Evil weak, see strength alone in Good, Yet hope to stem God's fire with walls of tow. Time Was unlocks the riddle of Time! Is, That offers choice of glory or of gloom; The solver makes Time Shall Be surely his. But hasten, Sisters! for even now the tomb Grates its slow hinge and calls from the abyss." "But not for him," I cried, "not yet for him, Whose large horizon, westering, star by star Her knuckles whitening round the bolt, While this and that the people guess, Vengeance leans eager from the sky, And to the skirts of praters cling, Who court the crowd they should compress, I turn in scorn to seek my king. Shut in what tower of darkling chance Dream'st thou of battle-axe and lance Or dungeon of a narrow doom, That for the Cross make crashing room? Come with hushed breath the battle waits In the wild van thy mace's swing; TWO SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF While doubters parley with their fates, BLONDEL. Make thou thine own and ours, my king! bless ye, What infinite odds 'twixt a hero to come And your only too palpable hero in esse! Precisely the odds (such examples are rife) "Twixt the poem conceived and the rhyme we make show of, "Twixt the boy's morning dream and the wake-up of life, "Twixt the Blondel God meant and a Blondel I know of! But the world's better off, I'm convinced of it now, Than if heroes, like buns, could be bought for a penny To regard all mankind as their haltered milch-cow, Well, And just care for themselves. Each son of hers adding his mite of And, choosing the sure way of coming out wrong, Gets to port as the next generation will witness. You think her old ribs have come all But her rivets were clinched by a wiser than you, And our sins cannot push the Lord's right hand from under. Better one honest man who can wait for God's mind In our poor shifting scene here though heroes were plenty! Better one bite, at forty, of Truth's bitter rind, Than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty ! I see it all now: when I wanted a king, 'T was the kingship that failed in myself I was seeking, 'Tis so much less easy to do than to sing, So much simpler to reign by a proxy than be king! Yes, I think I do see: after all's said and sung, Take this one rule of life and you never will rue it, T is but do your own duty and hold your own tongue And Blondel were royal himself, if he knew it ! If a whisk of Fate's broom snap your Our lives were but for this immortal gain crashing through, cobweb asunder; Of unstilled longing and inspiring pain! |