Page:Poems Barrett.djvu/30

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24
A DRAMA OF EXILE.
That brighter colours were the world's foregoing,
    Than shall be used.
Harken, oh harken! ye shall harken surely,
    For years and years,
The noise beside you, dripping coldly, purely,
    Of spirits' tears!
The yearning to a beautiful, denied you,
    Shall strain your powers:—
Ideal sweetnesses shall over-glide you,
    Resumed from ours!
In all your music, our pathetic minor
    Your ears shall cross;
And all fair sights shall mind you of diviner,
    With sense of loss!
We shall be near, in all your poet-languors
    And wild extremes;
What time ye vex the desert with vain angers,
    Or light with dreams!
And when upon you, weary after roaming,
    Death's seal is put,
By the forgone ye shall discern the coming,
    Through eyelids shut.

Spirits of the trees.
   Hark! the Eden trees are stirring.
   Slow and solemn to your hearing!
   Plane and cedar, palm and fir,
   Tamarisk and juniper,
   Each is throbbing in vibration
   Since that crowning of creation,
   When the God-breath spake abroad,
   Pealing down the depths of Godhead,
   Let us make man like to God.
   And the pine stood quivering
   In the Eden-gorges wooded,
   As the awful word went by;
   Like a vibrant chorded string
   Stretched from mountain-peak to sky!