Page:Livingstone in Africa.djvu/74

Lead poor, mad mortals to the wilds alone,
Into a barren wilderness of souls;
Mask'd in stern iron, prison'd in adamant,
A fiery gulf between them and the world;
Forbidden dear embracings of their kind,
And mutually yielding thoughts of all?
Though girt with kindly, once familiar faces,
Lonelier they than are the lonely dead;
Or haunted only by fell fiends that scowl
Out of the very eyes of sleepless love!
God whirls them forth, and sets them in a cleft
Of some ice-armour'd, cloud-robed precipice:
It snows, it howls; the everlasting mountains
Reel, crashing downward in the lightning's eye:
God murmurs in their ears a Mystery
In tongues unknown, of import terrible,
That none may hear or comprehend but they;
Nor even they, but in maim'd cadences;
Wind-wilder'd murmurs of a music wild.
Ah! we all wander blindly in a dream!
Save for a revelation from the Lord.