The stairs on stairs that wind and change and climb Even up to the utmost crag's edge curved and curled, More bright than vision, more than faith sublime, Strange as the light and darkness of the world; Strange as are night and morning, stars and sun, And washed from west and east by day's deep tide. Shine yet less fair, when all their heights are won, Than sundawn shows thy pillared mountain-side. Even so the dawn of death, whose light makes dim The starry fires that life sees rise and set, Shows higher than here he shone before us him Whom faith forgets not, nor shall fame forget. Even so those else unfooted heights we clomb Through scudding mist and eddying whirls of cloud, Blind as a pilot beaten blind with foam, And shrouded as a corpse with storm's grey shroud, Foot following foot along the sheer strait ledge Where space was none to bear the wild goat's feet Till blind we sat on the outer footless edge Where darkling death seemed fain to share the seat, The abyss before us, viewless even as time's, The abyss to left of us, the abyss to right, Bid thought now dream how high the freed soul climbs That death sets free from change of day and night. The might of raging mist and wind whose wrath Shut from our eyes the narrowing rock we trod, The wondrous world it darkened, made our path Like theirs who take the shadow of death for God. Yet eastward, veiled in vapour white as snow, The grim black herbless heights that scorn the sun And mock the face of morning rose to show The work of earth-born fire and earthquake done. And half the world was haggard night, wherein We strove our blind way through: but far above Was light that watched the wild mists whirl and spin, And far beneath a land worth light and love. Deep down the Valley of the Curse, undaunted By shadow and whisper of winds with sins for wings And ghosts of crime wherethrough the heights live haunted By present sense of past and monstrous things, The glimmering water holds its gracious way Full forth, and keeps one happier hand's-breadth green Of all that storm-scathed world whereon the sway Sits dark as death of deadlier things unseen. But on the soundless and the viewless river That bears through night perchance again to day The dead whom death and twin-born fame deliver From life that dies, and time's inveterate sway, No shadow save of falsehood and of fear That brands the future with the past, and bids The spirit wither and the soul grow sere, Hovers or hangs to cloud life's opening lids,