War and Disaster, Famine and Pestilence, Vaunt-couriers of the Century that comes, Behold them shaking their tremendous plumes Above the world! Lo, all the air grows dense With rumors of destruction and a sense, Cadaverous, of corpses and of tombs Predestined; while,--like monsters in the glooms,-- Bristling with battle, shadowy and immense, The Nations rise in dread apocalypse.-- Where now the boast Earth makes of civilization? Its brag of Christianity?--In vain We seek to see them in the wild eclipse Of hell and horror and the devastation Of Death triumphant on his hills of slain.
As one, who, journeying westward with the sun, Beholds at length from the up-towering hills, Far-off, a land unspeakable beauty fills, Circeän peaks and vales of Avalon: And, sinking weary, watches, one by one, The big seas beat between; and knows it skills No more to try; that now, as Heaven wills, This is the helpless end, that all is done: So ’tis with him, whom long a vision led In quest of Beauty--and who finds at last, She lies beyond his effort; all the waves Of all the world between them: while the dead, The myriad dead, who populate the Past With failure, hail him from forgotten graves.
Since Fancy taught me in her school of spells I know her tricks: These are not moths at all, Nor fireflies; but masking Elfland belles Whose link-boys torch them to Titania’s ball.
Like colored lanterns swung in Elfin towers, Wild morning-glories light the tangled ways, And, like the rosy rockets of the Fays, Burns the sloped crimson of the cardinal-flowers.
When winds go organing through the pines On hill and headland, darkly gleaming, Meseems I hear sonorous lines Of Iliads that the woods are dreaming.
Behold a hag whom Life denies a kiss As he rides questward in knighterrant-wise; Only when he hath passed her is it his To know, too late, the Fairy in disguise.
They mock the present and they haunt the past, And in the future there is naught agleam With hope, the soul desires, that at last The heart, pursuing, does not find a dream.
_What vague traditions do the golden eves, What legends do the dawns Inscribe in fire on Heaven’s azure leaves, The red sun colophons?_
_What ancient stories do the waters verse? What tales of war and love Do winds within the Earth’s vast house rehearse, God’s stars stand guard above?_