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| WHY sing the legends of the Holy Grail, | |
| The dead crusaders of the Sepulchre, | |
| While these men live? Are the great bards all dumb? | |
| Here is a vision to shake the blood of Song, | |
| And make Fame’s watchman tremble at his post. | 5 |
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| What shall prevail against the spirit of man, | |
| When cold, the lean and snarling wolf of hunger, | |
| The threatening spear of ice-mailed Solitude, | |
| Silence, and space, and ghostly-footed Fear | |
| Prevail not? Dante, in his frozen hell | 10 |
| Shivering, endured no bleakness like the void | |
| These men have warmed with their own flaming will, | |
| And peopled with their dreams. The wind from fierce | |
| Arcturus in their faces, at their backs | |
| The whip of the world’s doubt, and in their souls | 15 |
| Courage to die—if death shall be the price | |
| Of that cold cup that will assuage their thirst; | |
| They climb, and fall, and stagger toward the goal. | |
| They lay themselves the road whereby they travel, | |
| And sue God for a franchise. Does He watch | 20 |
| Behind the lattice of the boreal lights? | |
| In that grail-chapel of their stern-vowed quest, | |
| Ninety of God’s long paces toward the North, | |
| Will they behold the splendor of His face? | |
| To conquer the world must man renounce the world? | 25 |
| These have renounced it. Had ye only faith | |
| Ye might move mountains, said the Nazarene. | |
| Why, these have faith to move the zones of man | |
| Out to the point where All and Nothing meet. | |
| They catch the bit of Death between their teeth, | 30 |
| In one wild dash to trample the unknown | |
| And leap the gates of knowledge. They have dared | |
| Even to defy the sentinel that guards | |
| The doors of the forbidden—dared to hurl | |
| Their breathing bodies after the Ideal, | 35 |
| That like the heavenly kingdom must be taken | |
| Only by violence. The star that leads | |
| The leader of this quest has held the world | |
| True to its orbit for a million years. | |
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| And shall he fail? They never fail who light | 40 |
| Their lamp of faith at the unwavering flame | |
| Burnt for the altar service of the Race | |
| Since the beginning. He shall find the strange— | |
| The white immaculate Virgin of the North, | |
| Whose steady gaze no mortal ever dared, | 45 |
| Whose icy hand no human ever grasped. | |
| In the dread silence and the solitude | |
| She waits and listens through the centuries | |
| For one indomitable, destined soul, | |
| Born to endure the glory of her eyes, | 50 |
| And lift his warm lips to the frozen Grail. | |
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