Silences

There is an age, sad age, and hour obscure,
When man, aweary of adventurous dreams,
Turns from the far horizon's lure
His eyes towards the Inn of Good Repose.
Then simple Thoughts and staid,
Like an eager, humble serving-maid,
With delicate cares discreet
Lull infinite regrets to sleep,
And kindle in the heart once more
The fire of memories of the yore,
And from the hearth drive hopes importunate,
That one by one may steal within the great
Silences.

The silence of our memories
Whereon already falls the snow of years;
Love's silence, whose abandoned tomb
No tender hand makes bloom;
Silence of hopes long seeking, which
Have died like beggars in the ditch;
Silence of faith, whose torch has been put out
By life and doubt.

These silences our brothers, in they glide,
Like white monks, rigid, stern,
And sit down, without speaking, at our side....
Then we with Truth sojourn.
Ere they had come we saw but of the world
Its flowers and orchards pasturing our eyes,
But, when they entered in, our deeper souls
Explored, together with our thought, the night.
One of life's secrets each of them reveals,
One of fate's shadows each of them dispels,
And they can tell us whether we have walked
Along the road where God's hand pointed us.
Our friends, our children, all whose life seemed bound
Together with our own most intricately,
We see them far, alone in the great fight
Waged with Infinity, and Pain, and Death.
We thought that their hands which our hands have clasped,
And the long gazing of our eyes in theirs,
And that our voices uttering one thought,
And all our common hopes and self-same griefs,
And all our evenings lived beneath one lamp,
And all those hours upon one dial told,
The self-same clock of destiny--
Sealed our converging fates for evermore!
Now suddenly we are alone, so far
From life that we can scan the vast expanse
That separates us and divides us all.
These pure child's eyes, these beautiful fondled hands,
These voices intertwined like woven flowers,
Have touched perhaps, and recognized each other,
But like to friends, or strangers almost, who
To-morrow will resume their separate way.
And now that silence from us far removes
The lies of love for which our senses longed,
Lo, in the universe our soul is lost!
The child of our own blood, who, piously,
Some last, last night will come to close our eyes,
How he is one, his fate how otherwise
Than ours, how far removed, and how alone!
He enters life! He is no more our own!

Thus shall they go towards the call,
Till, lonely and despoiled of all,
Naked and poor we face the eternal hour!
And, seeing our heart as a temple with no god,
And closed our soul to every new delight,
Empty our hands, and in our eyes no sight,
We shall make question of ourselves: What tie
Unites this lowest, lamentable thing
We are ... to Immortality?