Edmund Clarence Stedman

Corda Concordia

⁠No sandalled footsteps fall,
⁠Tablet and coronal
From the Cephissian grove have vanished long,
⁠Yet in the sacred dale
⁠Still bides the nightingale
Easing his ancient heart-break still with song;
⁠Or is there some dim audience
Viewless to all save his unclouded sense?

⁠Revisit now those glades
⁠The stately mantled shades
Whose lips so wear the inexorable spell?
⁠Saying, with heads sunk low,
⁠All that we sought, we know,—
We know, but not to mortal ears may tell:
⁠No answer unto man's desire
Shall thus be made, to quench his eager fire.

⁠Under these orchard trees
⁠Still pure and fresh the breeze
As where the plane-tree whispered to the elm;[1]
⁠The thrush and robin bring
⁠A new-world offering
Of song,—nor are we banished from the realm
⁠Of thought that as the wind is pure,
And converse deep, and memories that endure.

⁠Some honey dropped as well,
⁠Some dew of hydromel
From wilding meadow-bees, upon the lips
⁠Of poet and sage who found,
⁠Here on our own dear ground,
Light as of old; who let no dull eclipse
⁠Obscure this modern sky, where first
Through perilous clouds the dawn of freedom burst.

⁠Within this leafy haunt
⁠Their service ministrant
Upheld the nobler freedom of the soul.
⁠How was it hither came
⁠The message and the flame
Anew? Make answer from thine aureole,
⁠O mother Nature, thou who best
Man's heart in all thy ways interpretest!

⁠High thoughts of thee brought near
⁠Unto our minstrel-seer
The antique calm, the Asian wisdom old,
⁠Till in his verse we heard
⁠Of blossom, bee, and bird,
Of mountain crag and pine, the manifold
⁠Rich song,—and on the world his eyes
Dwelt penetrant with vision sweet and wise.

⁠Whence came the silver tongue
⁠To one forever young
Who spoke until our hearts within us burned?
⁠This reverend one, who took
⁠No palimpsest or book,
But read his soul with glances inward turned,
⁠While (her rapt forehead like the dawn)
The Sibyl listened, by that music drawn,

⁠And from her fearless mouth,
⁠Where never speech had drouth,
Gave voice to some old chant of womanhood,—
⁠Her own imaginings,
⁠Like swift, resplendent things,
Flashing from eyes that knew to beam or brood.
⁠What sought these shining ones? What thought
From preacher-saint have poet and teacher caught?

⁠In scorn of meaner use,
⁠Anon, the young recluse
Builded his hut beside the woodland lake,
⁠And set the world far off,
⁠Though with no will to scoff,
Thus from the Earth's near breast fresh life to take.
⁠Against her bosom, heart to heart,
All Nature's sweets he ravished for his Art.

⁠The soul's fine instrument,
⁠Of pains and raptures blent,
Replied to these clear voices, tone for tone,
⁠Their cadence answering
⁠With tuneful sounds that wing
The upper air a few perchance have known,
⁠The stormless empyrean, where
In strength and joy a few move unaware.

⁠Ah, even thus the thrill
⁠Of life beyond life's ill
To feel betimes our envious selves are fain,—
⁠Seeing that, as birds in night
⁠Wind-driven against the light
Whose unseen armor mocks their stress and pain,
⁠Most men fall baffled in the surge
That to their cry responds but with a dirge.

⁠Where broods the Absolute,
⁠Or shuns our long pursuit
By fiery utmost pathways out of ken?
⁠Fleeter than sunbeams, lo,
⁠Our passionate spirits go,
And traverse immemorial space, and then
⁠Look off, and look in vain, to find
The master-clew to all they left behind.

⁠White orbs like angels pass
⁠Before the triple glass,
That men may scan the record of each flame,—
⁠Of spectral line and line
⁠The legendry divine,—
Finding their mould the same, and aye the same,
⁠The atoms that we knew before
Of which ourselves are made,—dust, and no more.

⁠So let our defter art
⁠Probe the warm brain, and part
Each convolution of the trembling shell:
⁠But whither now has fled
⁠The sense to matter wed
That murmured here? All silence, such as fell
⁠When to the shrine beyond the Ark
The soldiers reached, and found it void and dark.

⁠Seek elsewhere, and in vain
⁠The wings of morning chain;
Their speed transmute to fire, and bring the Light,
⁠The co-eternal beam
⁠Of the blind minstrel's dream;
But think not that bright heat to know aright,
⁠Nor how the trodden seed takes root,
Waked by its glow, and climbs to flower and fruit.

⁠Behind each captured law
⁠Weird shadows give us awe;
Press with your swords, the phantoms still evade;
⁠Through our alertest host
⁠Wanders at ease some ghost,
Now here, now there, by no enchantment laid,
⁠And works upon our souls its will,
Leading us on to subtler mazes still.

⁠We think, we feel, we are;
⁠And light, as of a star,
Gropes through the mist,—a little light is given;
⁠And aye from life and death
⁠We strive, with indrawn breath,
To somehow wrest the truth, and long have striven,
⁠Nor pause, though book and star and clod
Reply, Canst thou by searching find out God?

⁠As from the hollow deep
⁠The soul's strong tide must keep
Its purpose still. We rest not, though we hear
⁠No voice from heaven let fall,
⁠No chant antiphonal
Sounding through sunlit clefts that open near;
⁠We look not outward, but within,
And think not quite to end as we begin.

⁠For now the questioning age
⁠Cries to each hermitage,
Cease not to ask,—or bring again the time
⁠When the young world's belief
⁠Made light the mourner's grief
And strong the sage's word, the poet's rhyme,—
⁠Ere Knowledge thrust a spear-head through
The temple's veil that priest so closely drew.

⁠From what our fate inurns—
⁠Save that which music yearns
To speak, in ecstasy none understand,
⁠And (Oh, how like to it!)
⁠The half-formed rays that flit,
Like memories vague, above the further land—
⁠Cry, as the star-led Magi cried,
We seek, we seek, we will not be denied!

⁠Let the blind throng await
⁠A healer at the gate;
Our hearts press on to see what yonder lies,
⁠Knowing that arch on arch
⁠Shall loom across the march
And over portals gained new strongholds rise.
⁠The search itself a glory brings,
Though foiled so oft, that seeks the soul of things.

⁠Some brave discovery,
⁠Howbeit in vain we try
To clutch the shape that lures us evermore,
⁠It shall be ours to make,—
⁠As, where the waters break
Upon the margin of a pathless shore,
⁠They find, who sought for gold alone,
The sudden wonders of a clime unknown.

⁠Such treasure by the way
⁠Your errantry shall pay,
Nor shall it aught against your hope prevail
⁠That not to waking eyes
⁠The golden clouds arise
Wherewith our visions clothe the mystic Grail,
⁠When, in blithe halts upon the road,
We sleep where pilgrims earlier gone abode.

⁠After the twelvemonth set
⁠When as of old they met,
(A twelvemonth and a day, and kept their tryst,)
⁠And knight to pilgrim told
⁠Things given them to behold,
What country found, what gained of all they wist,
⁠(While ministering hands assign
To each a share of healing food and wine,)

⁠So come,—when long grass waves
⁠Above the holiest graves
Of them whose ripe adventure chides our own,—
⁠Come where the great elms lean
⁠Their quivering leaves and green
To shade the moss-clung roofs now sacred grown,
⁠And where the bronze and granite tell
How Liberty was hailed with Life's farewell.

⁠Here let your Academe
⁠Be no ignoble dream,
But, consecrate with life and death and song,
⁠Through the land's spaces spread
⁠The trust inherited,
The hope which from your hands shall take no wrong,
⁠And build an altar that may last
Till heads now young be laurelled with the Past.