Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By RichardHovey

1541 From “Taliesin: a Masque”

HERE falls no light of sun nor stars;

No stir nor striving here intrudes;

No moan nor merry-making mars

The quiet of these solitudes.

Submerged in sleep, the passive soul

Is one with all the things that seem;

Night blurs in one confusëd whole

Alike the dreamer and the dream.

O dwellers in they busy town!

For dreams you smile, for dreams you weep.

Come out, and lay your burdens down!

Come out; there is no God but Sleep.

Sleep, and renounce the vital day;

For evil is the child of life.

Let be the will to live, and pray

To find forgetfulness of strife.

Beneath the thicket of these leaves

No light discriminates each from each.

No Self that wrongs, no Self that grieves,

Hath longer deed nor creed nor speech.

Sleep on the mighty Mother’s breast!

Sleep, and no more be separate!

Then, one with Nature’s ageless rest,

There shall be no more sin to hate.

Spirits of Sleep,

That swell and sink

In the sea of Being

Like waves on the deep,

Forming, crumbling,

Fumbling, and tumbling

Forever, unseeing,

From brink to brink!

Perishing voices,

That call and call

From the coves of dream

With hollow noises!

I hear the sweep

Of the tides of sleep,

The ocean stream

Where the ages fall.

But not for these

Will I let me die,

Though my heart remembers

The calling seas;

For the cycles fought

Till form was wrought

And Might had members

And I was I.

Yet still to you,

O Dreams, I turn;

Not with a prayer

But a bidding to do!

I surmount and subdue you;

Not without you but through you

I shall forge and fare

To the chosen bourne.

We are ware of a will

Cries “Peace, be still!”

And our waters cease

To a troubled peace.

Lo, star upon star!

They dwell alone

Sirius, Altair,

Algebar!

Their ways are asunder,—

Aloof, in thunder

They march and flare

From zone to zone.

But the formless ether

Far and far

Enfolds their places.

Therein together

At one they sweep

From deep to deep,

And over its spaces

Star calls to star.

Through its waves they reach

Beyond their spheres

To their fellow fires.

Each yearns to each,

And the straight wills swerve

To a yielding curve,

And a moth’s desires

Deflect the years.

And with urge on urge

Of the rippling wave

Light speeds through space;

The domes emerge;

And the halls of Night

Behold each light

Reveal his face

To the vast conclave.

The centred Soul

By these is known.

Its will it wreaks

At its own control;

But dumb, unseeing,

The sea of Being

Washes the peaks

Where it strives alone.

As the dawn awaits

The recoiling gates

Of the eastern air,

We are calm and hear.