Classic Poem

Hearts, beat no more! Earth's Sleep has come,
All iron stands her wrinkled tree,
The streams that sang are stricken dumb,
The snowflake fades into the sea.
Hearts, throb no more! your time is past;
Thousands of years for this pent field
Ye have done battle. Now at last
The flags may sink, the captains yield.
Sleep, ye great Wars, just and unjust!
Sleep takes the gate and none defends.
Soft on your craters' fire and lust,
Civilisations, Sleep descends.
Time it is, time to cease carouse.
Let the nations and their noise grow dim!
Let the lights wane within the house
And darkness cover, limb by limb!
Across your passes, Alps and plains
A planetary vapour flows,
A last invader, and enchains
The vine, the woman, and the rose.
Sleep, Forests old! Sleep in your beds
Wild-muttering Oceans and dark Wells!
Sleep be upon your shrunken heads,
Blind, everlasting Pinnacles!
Sleep now, most dread, high-shining Kings,
Your torrent glories snapt in death.
Sleep, simple men—sunk water-springs,
And all the ground Man laboureth.
Sleep, Heroes, in your mountain walls—
The trumpet shall not wake again;
And ranged on sea-worn pedestals,
Sleep now, O sleepless Gods of men,
Nor keep wide your unchallenged orbs.
These troubled clans that make and mourn
Some heavy-lidded Cloud absorbs,
And the lulling snows of the Unborn.
Make ready thou, tremendous Night,
Stoop to the Earth, and shroud her scars,
And bid with chanting to the rite
The torches of thy train of stars!


Gloriously hath she offered up
From the thousand heaving plains of Time
Her sons, like incense from a cup,
Souls, that were made out of the slime.
She darkens, and yet all her dusk
Is but the sigh of him that breathes;
The thing unborn bursts from its husk,
The flash of the sublime unsheathes.
They strove, the Many and the One,
And all their strivings intervolved
Enlarged Thy Self-dominion;
Absolute, let them be absolved!
Fount of the time-embranching fire,
O waneless One, that art the core
Of every heart's unknown desire,
Take back the hearts that beat no more!