Songs of the Spirit

Those days are dead, and hope no newer birth. I left thy shores, blue stream, at His command Who reared the mountains from the shaken earth ; Who holds the lightning in His holy hand, And binds the stars in adamantine band, And yearns towards the children of His mind. I left their summer and their dewy strand To pass a life of work, alone, unkind, To fight a way toward heaven, mute, desolate and blind. The dusty desert glimmers in the night, A solitary palm-tree shades the well ; I am alone, a weary eremite Striving the secrets of the stars to tell, And every blade of grass that makes the dell Is counted and divined by me, who stare With eyes half blinded by the fires of Hell That my wild brain imagines everywhere, Roaring and raging round with red infernal glare. The yellow sand toward the deep sky extends : A dusky mirage would confuse my view ; 44