| |
| TARRY a moment, happy feet, | |
| That to the sound of laughter glide! | |
| O glad ones of the evening street, | |
| Behold what forms are at your side! | |
| |
| You conquerors of the toilsome day | 5 |
| Pass by with laughter, labour done; | |
| But these within their durance stay; | |
| Their travail sleeps not with the sun. | |
| |
| They, like dim statues without end, | |
| Their patient attitudes maintain; | 10 |
| Your triumphing bright course attend, | |
| But from your eager ways abstain. | |
| |
| Now, if you chafe in secret thought, | |
| A moment turn from light distress, | |
| And see how Fate on these hath wrought, | 15 |
| Who yet so deeply acquiesce. | |
| |
| Behold them, stricken, silent, weak, | |
| The maim’d, the mute, the halt, the blind, | |
| Condemn’d in hopeless hope to seek | |
| The thing which they shall never find. | 20 |
| |
| They haunt the shadows of your ways | |
| In masks of perishable mould: | |
| Their souls a changing flesh arrays, | |
| But they are changeless from of old. | |
| |
| Their lips repeat an empty call, | 25 |
| But silence wraps their thoughts around. | |
| On them, like snow, the ages fall; | |
| Time muffles all this transient sound. | |
| |
| When Shalmaneser pitch’d his tent | |
| By Tigris, and his flag unfurl’d, | 30 |
| And forth his summons proudly sent | |
| Into the new unconquer’d world; | |
| |
| Or when with spears Cambyses rode | |
| Through Memphis and her bending slaves, | |
| Or first the Tyrian gazed abroad | 35 |
| Upon the bright vast outer waves; | |
| |
| When sages, star-instructed men, | |
| To the young glory of Babylon | |
| Foreknew no ending; even then | |
| Innumerable years had flown | 40 |
| |
| Since first the chisel in her hand | |
| Necessity, the sculptor, took, | |
| And in her spacious meaning plann’d | |
| These forms, and that eternal look; | |
| |
| These foreheads, moulded from afar, | 45 |
| These soft, unfathomable eyes, | |
| Gazing from darkness, like a star; | |
| These lips, whose grief is to be wise. | |
| |
| As from the mountain marble rude | |
| The growing statue rises fair, | 50 |
| She from immortal patience hew’d | |
| The limbs of ever-young despair. | |
| |
| There is no bliss so new and dear, | |
| It hath not them far-off allured. | |
| All things that we have yet to fear | 55 |
| They have already long endured. | |
| |
| Nor is there any sorrow more | |
| Than hath ere now befallen these, | |
| Whose gaze is as an opening door | |
| On wild interminable seas. | 60 |
| |
| O Youth, run fast upon thy feet, | |
| With full joy haste thee to be fill’d, | |
| And out of moments brief and sweet | |
| Thou shalt a power for ages build. | |
| |
| Does thy heart falter? Here, then, seek | 65 |
| What strength is in thy kind! With pain | |
| Immortal bow’d, these mortals weak | |
| Gentle and unsubdued remain. | |
| |
