HYMENAEA.

If I with song could make your music more Or with its rapture quicken all your joys, Then would I summon from my singing store The poise and counterpoise Of rhythmic words made sweet with gathered lore From all their past employs.

Would they but come, the coloured words and brave, Each murmuring of the hour that gave him birth, How one was sad, one merry and one grave; But all the sorrow and mirth, Blent in a symphony, should be your slave And sing the joys of earth.

And, as it sang, the world would be again As in the golden morning of desire, When the first maiden loved the first of men, And the first dawn shed fire, And the young winds about their woodland den Sang through the leafy lyre.

There were no cities then, no smoky pall, No eager highways opening on despair, No flame of lights when gracious gloom should fall Through the dim evening air, But gradual moons and timorous stars were all That lit the secret lair.

Round them the forest-wildernesses sighed Under the homeless winds that stir and stray; Night-wandering owlets in the darkness cried, The panther took his prey; They had no fear; Love’s sheltering wings were wide And brought them safe till day.

We cannot know their simple joys and sweet, Or of the brown leaf make the buds of spring, For time has trampled with his flying feet The mouths that strive to sing And bound with leaden vanities the fleet And heavenward-climbing wing.

But the great world goes onward as of old, With moon and stars and nightly gift of dew; The unwearied sun’s magnificence of gold Doth day by day renew The fainting earth, that leaps from out the cold Unto her summons true.

There is a resurrection from the tomb Of years, the grave-clothes that our souls enmesh; Each wakening day brings with it from the gloom Its dreams and deeds afresh, Dreams that are deeds astir within the womb, Deeds that are dreams made flesh.

Therefore, remembering all the weary change And heavy burden of our lifeless fears, We yet have hope, and watch the morning range Above the mist of tears, If haply, to our prayers no longer strange, She shall shine down the years.

I do not bid you rest. The field is set, The great battalions through the twilight move, Each to his post. The call is chanting yet And we stand forth to prove If good shall strike down ill in conflict met— And on our side is Love.