Classic Poem

Then I cried and sighed to be
Where the unfleeting visions are,
Till Heaven called for Night, and she
Led God's thoughts forth, star by star;
And an onward-beckoning hand
Led me to a waste low land,
Stemmed with growths of silent gloom, —
Funeral yewtree's hearselike plume,
Hermit poplar's heavenward tress
Sighing up its loneliness,
And weed-nurturing sylvan spaces
Thick with whispering fears, the places
By old Night's pale people trod,
Demon, fay and forest-god.
There She met me in mid path,
Who the keys of Aiden hath.
O'er her gloomed a cypress-wood,
And behind her, like a hood,
A large moon of mellow rim,
Showed her white face warm and dim,
Showed her heavy hyacinth hair,
Spread in clusters burnished fair,
Eyes fixed on the eternal Now,
And clear throat and eyes and brow,
Like proud marbles of the Greek
Great with woes they will not speak,
Then two snowy slopes of breast
Round their vale of tearless rest,
And a sable robe's downfall
Wet with tear-dew shed by all.
There with hands behind her drawn
Stayed she me. A doubtful dawn
Of new life dwelt in her face,
A constraining regal grace
Crowned that look, which, as a spur,
Goads the world to question her.
So I spake to her and said:
" Summoner of the quick and dead,
Thou who holdest in thy hands
All these darkened valley-lands,
Shadow-stoled Persephone;
Say (for all things flow to thee)
Harbourest thou in thy pure clime
Life's defaulters, — healing Time;
Slow-paced, softly-speaking Truth;
Star-eyed Love; and sun-haired Youth; —
Those who wooed me scarce a day,
Won my faith and fled away;
Though I cried, " Ah! welladay!
Stay, oh, stay. "
Whereto, gentle as a child,
She replied in accents mild:
" They that met thee on thy road
Hold on earth no fixed abode,
Sent as shadows where ye dwell,
Pilgrims from the Invisible;
But their substances unspent
Dwell where all is permanent. "
Than with white arm drawn apart
From the side where beats man's heart,
Hollowed she a sunlit space
Deep within her calm embrace;
As a stooping silver birch
Flanks a wood-path, when we search
Down its dusk to where the day
Floods the arched walk with its ray.
There, beneath life-laden trees,
Bowing o'er their psalteries,
Sang the young-eyed seraphim,
Green-couched by a fountain's brim,
With blown hair that flamed above
Rapture-lifted mouths of love,
And wide wonder-lighted eyes
Lost in smiles of deep surmise.
And in midst of these there stood
That fourfold Beatitude
Round about a grassy throne,
With white blossoms overblown,
Like the Prophet's mystic Four
Seen in Patmian cave of yore
Chanting " Holy " evermore
And I saw bright sylvan spaces
Sown with flowerlike forms and faces
Of the dead world's happy races,
Whilst, like thunder far away,
Rose a spheral roundelay
From the Four who thus did say
" Here, we stay. "