| IN Youth, when through our veins runs fast | |
| The bright red stream of life, | |
| The Soul’s Voice is a trumpet-blast | |
| That calls us to the strife. | |
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| The Spirit spurns its prison-bars, | 5 |
| And feels with force endued | |
| To scale the ramparts of the stars | |
| And storm Infinitude. | |
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| Youth passes; like a dungeon grows | |
| The Spirit’s house of clay: | 10 |
| The voice that once in music rose | |
| In murmurs dies away. | |
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| But in the day when sickness sore | |
| Smites on the body’s walls, | |
| The Soul’s Voice through the breach once more | 15 |
| Like to a trumpet calls. | |
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| Well shall it be with him who heeds | |
| The mystic summons then! | |
| His after-life with loving deeds | |
| Shall blossom amongst men. | 20 |
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| He shall have gifts—the gift that feels | |
| The germ within the clod, | |
| And hears the whirring of the wheels | |
| That turn the mills of God! | |
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| The gift that sees with glance profound | 25 |
| The secret soul of things, | |
| And in the silence hears the sound | |
| Of vast and viewless wings! | |
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| The veil of Isis sevenfold | |
| To him as gauze shall be, | 30 |
| Wherethrough, clear-eyed, he shall behold | |
| The Ancient Mystery. | |
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| He shall do battle for the True, | |
| Defend till death the Right, | |
| With Shoes of Swiftness Wrong pursue, | 35 |
| With Sword of Sharpness smite. | |
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| And, dying, he shall haply hear, | |
| Like golden trumpets blown | |
| For joy, far voices sweet and clear— | |
| Soul-voices like his own. | 40 |
