666

The past, its mask of union on,
Had ceased to live and thrive.
The past, its mask of union gone,
Say, is it more alive?

"Your creeds are dead, your rites are dead,

Your social order too!

Where tarries he, the Power who said: See, I make all things new?

"The millions suffer still, and grieve, And what can helpers heal

With old-world cures men half believe
For woes they wholly feel?

"And yet men have such need of joy!
But joy whose grounds are true;
And joy that should all hearts employ
As when the past was new.

666 'Ah, not the emotion of that past,

Its common hope, were vain!

Some new such hope must dawn at last, Or man must toss in pain.

But a white rose of Mary's gift,

For service meetly worn; Her hair that lay along her back Was yellow like ripe corn.

Herseemed she scarce had been a day
One of God's choristers;

The wonder was not yet quite gone
From that still look of hers;
Albeit, to them she left, her day
Had counted as ten years.

(To one, it is ten years of years.

Yet now, and in this place,
Surely she leaned o'er me-her hair
Fell all about my face.
Nothing: the autumn fall of leaves.
The whole year sets apace.)

It was the rampart of God's house
That she was standing on;
By God built over the sheer depth
The which is Space begun ;

So high, that looking downward thence
She scarce could see the sun.

It lies in Heaven, across the flood
Of ether, as a bridge.

Beneath the tides of day and night

With flame and darkness ridge The void, as low as where this earth Spins like a fretful midge.

Around her, lovers, newly met

'Mid deathless love's acclaims, Spoke evermore among themselves

Their heart-remembered names; And the souls mounting up to God Went by her like thin flames.

And still she bowed herself and stooped Out of the circling charm;

Until her bosom must have made

The bar she leaned on warm,
And the lilies lay as if asleep
Along her bended arm.

From the fixed place of Heaven she saw
Time like a pulse shake fierce
Through all the worlds. Her gaze still

strove

Within the gulf to pierce

Its path; and now she spoke as when
The stars sang in their spheres.

The sun was gone now; the curled moon
Was like a little feather

Fluttering far down the gulf; and now She spoke through the still weather. Her voice was like the voice the stars Had when they sang together.

(Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird's

song,

Strove not her accents there,
Fain to be harkened? When those bells
Possessed the mid-day air,

Strove not her steps to reach my side
Down all the echoing stair?)

"I wish that he were come to me,
For he will come," she said.
"Have I not prayed in Heaven?-on
earth,

Lord, Lord, has he not pray'd? Are not two prayers a perfect strength? And shall I feel afraid?

"When round his head the aureole clings,

And he is clothed in white,
I'll take his hand and go with him
To the deep wells of light;

As unto a stream we will step down,
And bathe there in God's sight.

"We two will stand beside that shrine, Occult, withheld, untrod,

Whose lamps are stirred continually
With prayer sent up to God;
And see our old prayers, granted, melt
Each like a little cloud.

"We two will lie i' the shadow of

That living mystic tree

Within whose secret growth the Dove Is sometimes felt to be,

While every leaf that His plumes touch Saith His Name audibly.

"And I myself will teach to him,

I myself, lying so,

The songs I sing here; which his voice
Shall pause in, hushed and slow,
And find some knowledge at each pause,
Or some new thing to know."

(Alas! We two, we two, thou say'st! Yea, one wast thou with me

That once of old. But shall God lift
To endless unity

The soul whose likeness with thy soul
Was but its love for thee?)

"We two," she said, "will seek the groves

Where the lady Mary is, With her five handmaidens

names

Are five sweet symphonies, Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, Margaret and Rosalys..

whose