_O scholar_ grey, with quiet eyes, Reading the charactered pages, bright With one tall candle’s flickering light, In a turret chamber under the skies; O scholar, learned in gramarye, Have you seen the manifold things I see? Have you seen the forms of tracèd towers Whence clamorous voices challenge the hours: Gaunt tree-branches, pitchy black Against the long, wind-driven wrack Of scurrying, shuddering clouds, that race Ever across the pale moon’s face? Have you heard the tramp of hurrying feet. There beneath, in the shadowy street, Have you heard sharp cries, and seen the flame Of silvery steel, in a perilous game, A perilous game for men to play, Hid from the searching eyes of day? Have you heard the great awakening breath, Like trump that summons the saints from death, Of the wild, majestical wind, which blows Loud and splendid, that each man knows Far, O far away is the sea, Breaking, murmuring, stark and free? All these things I hear and see, I, a scholar of gramarye: All are writ in the ancient books Clear, exactly, and he that looks Finds the night and the changing sea, The years gone by, and the years to be: (He that searches, with tireless eyes In a turret-chamber under the skies) Passion and joy, and sorrow and laughter, Life and death, and the things thereafter. To an Elzevir Cicero _Dust-covered_ book, that very few men know, Even as very few men understand The glory of an ancient, storied land In the wild current of the ages’ flow, Have not old scholars, centuries ago Caressed you in the hollow of their hand, The while with quiet, kindly eyes they scanned Your pages, yellowed now, then white as snow? A voice there is, cries through your every word, Of him, that after greatest glory came Down the grey road to darkness and to tears; A voice like far seas in still valleys heard, Crying of love and death and hope and fame That change not with the changing of the years. To a Dürer Drawing of Antwerp Harbour _Figured_ by Dürer’s magic hand wast thou, That, lightning-like, traced on the lucid page Rough, careless lines, with wizardry so sage That yet the whole was fair, I know not how: Ships of gaunt masts, and stark, sea-smitten prow, Idle, yet soon again to sweep the main In the swift service of old merchants’ gain, Where are ye now, alas, where are ye now? Gone are ye all, and vanished very long, Sunk with great glory in the storied wars, Or conquered by the leaping breakers wild: And yet we love your image, like some song That tells of ancient days and high, because Old Dürer looked upon you once and smiled. Pure Virginia York River Returns