Part 4 — ARTHUR WILLIAM EDGAR O’SHAUGHNESSY

WE are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems. With wonderful deathless ditties We build up the world’s great cities, And out of a fabulous story We fashion an empire’s glory: One man with a dream, at pleasure, Shall go forth and conquer a crown; And three with a new song’s measure Can trample an empire down. We, in the ages lying In the buried past of the earth, Built Nineveh with our sighing, And Babel itself with our mirth; And o’erthrew them with prophesying To the old of the new world’s worth; For each age is a dream that is dying, Or one that is coming to birth.

I MADE another garden, yea, For my new Love: I left the dead rose where it lay And set the new above. Why did my Summer not begin? Why did my heart not haste? My old Love came and walk’d therein, And laid the garden waste. She enter’d with her weary smile, Just as of old; She look’d around a little while And shiver’d with the cold: Her passing touch was death to all, Her passing look a blight; She made the white rose-petals fall, And turn’d the red rose white. Her pale robe clinging to the grass Seem’d like a snake That bit the grass and ground, alas! And a sad trail did make. She went up slowly to the gate, And then, just as of yore, She turn’d back at the last to wait And say farewell once more.

IF you go over desert and mountain, Far into the country of Sorrow, To-day and to-night and to-morrow, And maybe for months and for years; You shall come with a heart that is bursting For trouble and toiling and thirsting. You shall certainly come to the fountain At length,—to the Fountain of Tears. Very peaceful the place is, and solely For piteous lamenting and sighing, And those who come living or dying Alike from their hopes and their fears; Full of cypress-like shadows the place is, And statues that cover their faces: But out of the gloom springs the holy And beautiful Fountain of Tears. And it flows and it flows with a motion So gentle and lovely and listless, And murmurs a tune so resistless To him who hath suffer’d and hears— You shall surely—without a word spoken, Kneel down there and know your heart broken, And yield to the long-curb’d emotion That day by the Fountain of Tears. For it grows and it grows, as though leaping Up higher the more one is thinking; And ever its tunes go on sinking More poignantly into the ears: Yea, so blessèd and good seems that fountain, Reach’d after dry desert and mountain, You shall fall down at length in your weeping And bathe your sad face in the tears. Then alas! while you lie there a season And sob between living and dying, And give up the land you were trying To find ’mid your hopes and your fears; —O the world shall come up and pass o’er you, Strong men shall not stay to care for you, Nor wonder indeed for what reason Your way should seem harder than theirs. But perhaps, while you lie, never lifting Your cheek from the wet leaves it presses, Nor caring to raise your wet tresses And look how the cold world appears— O perhaps the mere silences round you— All things in that place Grief hath found you— Yea, e’en to the clouds o’er you drifting, May soothe you somewhat through your tears. You may feel, when a falling leaf brushes Your face, as though some one had kiss’d you; Or think at least some one who miss’d you Had sent you a thought,—if that cheers; Or a bird’s little song, faint and broken, May pass for a tender word spoken: —Enough, while around you there rushes That life-drowning torrent of tears. And the tears shall flow faster and faster, Brim over and baffle resistance, And roll down blear’d roads to each distance Of past desolation and years; Till they cover the place of each sorrow, And leave you no past and no morrow: For what man is able to master And stem the great Fountain of Tears? But the floods and the tears meet and gather; The sound of them all grows like thunder: —O into what bosom, I wonder, Is pour’d the whole sorrow of years? For Eternity only seems keeping Account of the great human weeping: May God, then, the Maker and Father— May He find a place for the tears!