Stay, Death, Not mine the Christus-wand Wherewith to charge thee and command: I plead. Most gently hold the hand Of her thou leadest far away; Fear thou to let her naked feet Tread ashes—but let mosses sweet Her footing tempt, where’er ye stray. Shun Orcus; win the moonlit land Belulled—the silent meadows lone, Where never any leaf is blown From lily-stem in Azrael’s hand. There, till her love rejoin her lowly (Pensive, a shade, but all her own) On honey feed her, wild and holy; Or trance her with thy choicest charm. And if, ere yet the lover’s free, Some added dusk thy rule decree— That shadow only let it be Thrown in the moon-glade by the palm. EPILOGUE _If Luther’s day expand to Darwin’s year,_ _Shall that exclude the hope—foreclose the fear?_ Unmoved by all the claims our times avow, The ancient Sphinx still keeps the porch of shade; And comes Despair, whom not her calm may cow, And coldly on that adamantine brow Scrawls undeterred his bitter pasquinade. But Faith (who from the scrawl indignant turns) With blood warm oozing from her wounded trust, Inscribes even on her shards of broken urns The sign o’ the cross—_the spirit above the dust!_ Yea, ape and angel, strife and old debate— The harps of heaven and dreary gongs of hell; Science the feud can only aggravate— No umpire she betwixt the chimes and knell: The running battle of the star and clod Shall run forever—if there be no God. Degrees we know, unknown in days before; The light is greater, hence the shadow more; And tantalized and apprehensive Man Appealing—Wherefore ripen us to pain? Seems there the spokesman of dumb Nature’s train. But through such strange illusions have they passed Who in life’s pilgrimage have baffled striven— Even death may prove unreal at the last, And stoics be astounded into heaven. Then keep thy heart, though yet but ill-resigned— Clarel, thy heart, the issues there but mind; That like the crocus budding through the snow— That like a swimmer rising from the deep— That like a burning secret which doth go Even from the bosom that would hoard and keep; Emerge thou mayst from the last whelming sea, And prove that death but routs life into victory.