If life have eyes to lift again and see, Beyond the bounds of sensual sight or breath, What life incognisable of ours may be That turns our light to darkness deep as death. Priests and the soulless serfs of priests may swarm With vulturous acclamation, loud in lies, About his dust while yet his dust is warm Who mocked as sunlight mocks their base blind eyes, Their godless ghost of godhead, false and foul As fear his dam or hell his throne: but we, Scarce hearing, heed no carrion church-wolf's howl: The corpse be theirs to mock; the soul is free. Free as ere yet its earthly day was done It lived above the coil about us curled: A soul whose eyes were keener than the sun, A soul whose wings were wider than the world. We, sons of east and west, ringed round with dreams, Bound fast with visions, girt about with fears, Live, trust, and think by chance, while shadow seems Light, and the wind that wrecks a hand that steers. He, whose full soul held east and west in poise, Weighed man with man, and creed of man's with creed, And age with age, their triumphs and their toys, And found what faith may read not and may read. Scorn deep and strong as death and life, that lit With fire the smile at lies and dreams outworn Wherewith he smote them, showed sublime in it The splendour and the steadfastness of scorn. What loftier heaven, what lordlier air, what space Illimitable, insuperable, infinite, Now to that strong-winged soul yields ampler place Than passing darkness yields to passing light, No dream, no faith can tell us: hope and fear, Whose tongues were loud of old as children's, now From babbling fall to silence: change is here, And death; dark furrows drawn by time's dark plough. Still sunward here on earth its flight was bent, Even since the man within the child began To yearn and kindle with superb intent And trust in time to magnify the man. Still toward the old garden of the Sun, whose fruit The honey-heavy lips of Sophocles Desired and sang, wherein the unwithering root Sprang of all growths that thought brings forth and sees Incarnate, bright with bloom or dense with leaf Far-shadowing, deep as depth of dawn or night: And all were parcel of the garnered sheaf His strenuous spirit bound and stored aright. And eastward now, and ever toward the dawn, If death's deep veil by life's bright hand be rent, We see, as through the shadow of death withdrawn, The imperious soul's indomitable ascent. But not the soul whose labour knew not end-- But not the swordsman's hand, the crested head-- The royal heart we mourn, the faultless friend, Burton--a name that lives till fame be dead.