Classic Poem

TO-NIGHT as I was riding on a wave
Of triumph and of glory,
A Question suddenly, as from the grave,
Rose in me, culpatory.

" Whence come to you this joyance and this strength,"
It said, " this might of vision?
This will that measures all things to its length,
And cuts with calm decision?

" This blood within your veins, that is as wine
Which Destiny's self blesses,
Whence flows it, from what grape that is divine,
Or trodden from what presses?

" Do you so proud forget what hands have borne
You to the heights and crowned you?
Would you behold what sackcloth has been worn
That laurels may surround you?

" Would you survey the sources of your breath,
The vouchers of your being?"
It paused, and I replied, " Waker of death,
I would, with worthy seeing!

" I would! For if the flesh of me and soul
Are fibred with the ages,
My triumph is of them and manifold
Of all life's mystic stages."

So forth they came — a vast ancestral line,
Upon my vision teeming —
All shapes whom birth and nature could affine
Unto me, faintly gleaming.

I knew them as I knew myself, and felt
The Day of each within me;
And so began to speak, the while they dwelt
About — they who had been me.

" My Sires," I said, " think you I have forgot
The fervour of your living?
How into me is moulded all you thought,
Of getting or of giving?

" Think you I do not feel my every drop
Of blood is as an ocean
In which are surging and will never stop
All things your hope gave motion?

" My senses, that are swift to take delight
And shrine it in their being,
Are they not born of all your faith, and bright
With all your bliss of seeing?

" And my full heart within whose fount I hear
Your voices that are vanished,
Can it forget its gratitude, or fear
The foes you braved and banished?

" No. But the blindly striving years that led
Your eyes first up to Beauty,
Or taught you out of Ill to disembed
The golden veins of Duty.

" The wasting and incalculable wants
That in you quailed or quivered;
The longing that lit stars no dark now daunts —
I know, who stand delivered!

" To you then from whose throng the centuries
Long dead slip now their shrouding,
Who from oblivion's profundities
Rise up, and round are crowding,

" I say, Immortal do I hold your will!
Its gathered might ascending
Is sacred with the unconquerable thrill
Of God — who sees its ending;

" Of God — on whose strong Vine, Heredity,
Rooted in voids primeval,
The world climbs ever to some great To-Be
Of passion or reprieval."

I said — and on night's infinite beheld
Silence alone beside me;
And majesty of greater meanings welled
Into my soul, to guide me.