Song of the wave / George Cabot Lodge [electronic text]

PASTORAL

SLOPES of the sun and vine, and thou dark stream, Thou minstrel of the forest-gloom, whose roll Is like the passing of a natural dream Through depths of patient sleep To lend endurance to the taxèd soul. The cruel life beneath the cruel noon,Where men are quenched like dewdrops in the sun, Where haggard women reach to God and weep, Never corrodes thy silent solitude; But where thy sheer, green shadows shoreward creep Through the slow afternoon, The battle lost, the poem half-begun, Are chaplets that the hymning dawn-stars keepTo grace the splendid hope our youth imbued.

The twilight flowers close And down the shadow falls a timid star; Afar The sigh and silence of a changing wind, The perfume of a dying rose— Beyond the senses and beyond the mind Dimly we hear a graver music grow,— Peace! Peace! the world is tuneful of her woes: With man's despair the richer chord impearled Is infinite of grief; we in the world Hear scattered discord, nor the broad full flow Of song until, waxed greater than the whole, Wide, from their slumber's mystery, unclose The vision-laden eyelids of the soul.