Unclasped the wedded eagles of her belt, Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity: Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity. And one low churl, compact of thankless earth, The fatal byword of all years to come, Boring a little auger-hole in fear, Peeped - but his eyes, before they had their will, And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crowned, THE TWO VOICES. A STILL Small voice spake unto me, "Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be ?" Then to the still small voice I said: "Let me not cast in endless shade What is so wonderfully made." To which the voice did urge reply: To-day I saw the dragon-fly Come from the wells where he did lie. "An inner impulse rent the veil Of his old husk: from head to tail Came out clear plates of sapphire mail. "He dried his wings: like gauze they grew: Through crofts and pastures wet with dew A living flash of light he flew." 1 said, "When first the world began, Young Nature through five cycles ran, And in the sixth she moulded man. "She gave him mind, the lordliest Proportion, and, above the rest, Dominion in the head and breast." Thereto the silent voice replied: Look up through night: the world is wide. "This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe Is boundless better, boundless worse. "Think you this mould of hopes and fears Could find no statelier than his peers In yonder hundred million spheres ?" It spake, moreover, in my mind: Then did my response clearer fall: "No compound of this earthly ball Is like another, all in all." 36 To which he answered scoffingly : "Or will one beam be less intense, Is cancelled in the world of sense?" I would have said, "Thou canst not know" Again the voice spake unto me: Surely 't were better not to be. "Thine anguish will not let thee sleep, Thou canst not think, but thou wilt weep.' I said, "The years with change advance : I shut my life from happier chance. "Some turn this sickness yet might take, Even yet." But he: "What drug can make A withered palsy cease to shake ?" 57 |