Not from these forms my questionings come That serving truth are purified, But from the truth itself, the way, the goal, One challenge vast that strikes faith dumb-- If truth be fickle, who shall be our guide? “Truth that is neither variable, nor hath Shadow of turning?” Ah, where turns she not! Where yesterday she stood, Now the horizon empties--lo, her steps Where yonder scholar woos, are hardly cold, Yet shall he find her never, but the thought Mantling within him like her blood Shall from his eloquence fade, and leave his words Flavor’d with vacant quaintness for his son. What crafty patience, scholar, hast thou used, Useless ere it was begun-- What headless waste of wing, Beating vainly round and round! In no one Babel were the tongues confused, But they who handle truth, from sound to sound Master another speech continuously. Deaf to familiar words, our callous ear Will quiver to the edge of utterance strange; When truth to God’s truth-weary sight draws near, Cannot God see her till she suffer change? Must ye then change, my vanished youth, Home customs of my dreams? Change and farewell! Farewell, your lost phantasmic truth That will not constant dwell, But flees the passion of our eyes And leaves no hint behind her Whence she dawns or whither dies, Or if she live at all, or only for a moment seems. Here tho’ I only dream I find her, Here will I watch the twilight darken. Yonder the scholar’s voice spins on Mesh upon mesh of loveless fate; Here will I rest while truth deserts him still. What hath she left thee, Brother, but thy voice? After her, have thy will, And happy be thy choice! Here rather will I rest, and harken Voices longer dead but longer loved than thine. Yet still my most of peace is more unrest, As one who plods a summer road Feels the coolness his own motion stirs, But when he stops the dead heat smothers him. Here in this calm my soul is weariest, Each question with malicious goad Pressing the choice that still my soul defers To visioned hours not thus eclipsed and dim, Lest in my haste I deem That truth’s invariable part Is her eluding of man’s heart. Farewell, calm priest who pacest slow After the stalwart-marching choir! Have men thro’ thee taught God their dear desire? Hath God thro’ thee absolvèd sin? What is thy benediction, if I go Sore perplexed and wrought within? Open the chapel doors, and let Boisterous music play us out Toward the flaring molten west Whither the nerve-racked day is set; Let the loud world, flooding back, Gulf us in its hungry rout; Rest? What part have we in rest?