Orpheus

Breaks the frail. temple-doors of love asunder, And wakes the new life’s promise in pale wonder, Shattering the moulded glass, the shape Selenian. Fruits of the earth, our low song joins the crowd. We need not (to be heard) to thunder loud. Our hearts are lifted up, our heads with love low bowed. The tenderest light, the deepest hidden, is shed Up through dark earth—your home, O happy dead !— Crusted in darkness lie the secret lights. Formed in the agony of earth as tears, Clothed in the crystal mirror of the years, We dwell, sweet-hearted nun-like eremites ! Diamond and ruby, topaz and sapphire, Emerald and amethyst, one clear bright fire, We are earth’s stars below, as she above hath Night’s. Our sweet clean song pierces the cover, And thin keen notes of music flit and hover Like spirit-birds upon the lyre of this our lover We, children of the mountains, lying low On earth’s own bosom, deep, embowered, flow In wide soft waves of land: upon us sweep The mightiest rivers : in our hollows lie Great lakes: our voices hardly rise, but die In the cold streams of air: shallow and deep: Leagues by the thousand, dells a minute long; All we are children of the mighty throng That cluster where the mountains fail, and sleep 67