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Poets, and mighty prophets—shapes have cried

About the world, or moved in mournful pride;

And are no longer seen.

From many lands

Their plaint was lifted; from how many a shore

Sorrows have wailed, that are not any more!

They sleep with folded hands.

They have their day:

Their cry is loud about the earth, who come

To the one end; the singing lips grow dumb

Always in the one way.

Though they implore,

Brief is the plea, inflexible the fate!

Silence has the last word; and then—the great

Silence, forevermore.

Pondering these,

The fretful spirit in bewilderment

Quickens with a vague doubt, and, not content,

Broods—and is ill at ease.

Her being is

Throned on so frail a pulse; such fleeting breath

Bears up her dream across the gulf of death

And the obscure abyss.

Always she hears

The hurtling chariots of the hurrying blood,

Her shuttling breath that in the solitude

Weaves the one self she wears.

Now first the vast

Veil over heaven is rent, and bares the whole

Shining Reality; whereat the soul