Collected Works (Vol. I)

110 MYSTERIES: LYRICAL AND DRAMATIC Why not with time? To-morrow we may see The circle ended—if to-morrow be— And gaze on chaos, and a week bring back Adam and Eve beneath the apple tree. Or, like the comet, the wild race may end Out into darkness, and our circle bend Round to all glory in a sudden sweep, And speed triumphant with the sun to friend. Tove will not leave my home. She knows my tears, My angers and caprices ; still my ears Listen to singing voices, till I weep Once more, less sadly, and set hounds on fears. She will not leave me comfortless. And why? Through the dimmed glory of my clouded eye She catches one sharp glint of love for her: She will not leave me ever till I die :— Nay, though [die! Beyond the distant gloom Heaven springs, a fountain, out of Change’s woh ! ‘Time would all men within the grave inter :— For Time himself shall no god find a tomb? Glory and love and work precipitate The end of man’s desire—so sayeth Fate. Man answers: Love is stronger, work more sure, Glory more fadeless than her shafts abate. Though all worlds fail, the pulse of Life be still, God fall, all darken, she hath not her will Of deeds beyond recall, that shall endure: For us, these three divinest glasses fill, Fill to the brim with lustrous dew, nor fail To leave the blossom and the nightingale, Love’s earlier kiss, and manhood’s glowing prime, These us suffice. Shall man or Fate prevail? Lo, we are blind, and dubious fingers grope In Despair’s dungeon for the key of Hope ;? Lo, we are chained, and with a broken rhyme Would file our fetters and enlarge our scope. Yet ants may move the mountain; none is small But he who stretches out no arm at all; Toadstools have wrecked fair cities in a night, One poet’s song may bid a kingdom fall. Add to thy fellow-men one ounce of aid— The block begins to shift, the start is made: The rest is thine ; with overwhelming might The balance changes, and the task is paid. Join’st thou thy feeble hands in foolish prayer To him thy brain hath moulded and set there In thy brain’s heaven? Such a god replies As thy fearsmove. So men pray everywhere. What God there be, is real. By His might 3egot the universe within the night ; If he had prayed to His own mind’s weak lies Think’st thou the heaven and earth had stood upright ? Kemember Ifim, but smite! No workman hews His stone aright whose nervy arms refuse To ply the chisel, but are raised to ask A visionary foreman he may choose From the distortions ofa sodden mind. God did first work on earth when woman- kind He chipped from Adam’s rib-—a thankless task I wot [lis wisdom has long since repined, ' See Bunyan’s Pilgrim's Progress, where Hope unlocks the dungeon of Giant [espair. Crowley more wisely would use the key of Work.