Do the things that were stolen remain stolen? Do the lives that were destroyed remain dead? Do the stragglers who failed still fail? Does the sleeper who slept the sleep of the merchant awake only to the merchant? Does the law that was yesterday at my throat awake only to the law? Does the singer awake only to sing, the artist to paint, and the orator to talk? Or does the merchant awake to the man? Or does the law of the state awake to the law of the heart? Or do stolen things shift back into right relations? Or is the singer silent, or does the artist put aside his paints, or has the orator stopt talking, because something greater than song or art or eloquence has appeared in the face of the multitude? How are you, dear world, this morning? We have had confidences other days but somehow the confidences of this day are sweetest of all, They find me where I am remote, they seek me out where I am reluctant, they confirm me where I am weak, They melt me down from flaw and angle into purity and circle, They interpret me to last night’s strangers and they introduce me to the real meanings of my vagrant past, They remove me from my quarrels and they deliver me to truce and peace. For now I see that when of old I thought of justice and believed I was dreaming that only then was I awake, For now I see that the wrongdoer is the first to withdraw wrong and is the only one who can withdraw it, For now I see that all the effort I spent trying to discover why lives were beautiful or ugly has shown me that all ugliness and all beauty finally must lapse in one transfiguration, For now in the confidences of this morning, in the rapture of this awakening, I find my illimitable roots trailed backward and forward and round into all time and all men, Pledging my love to countless surrenders and repeals. O MY DEAD COMRADE (_for W. W._) O my dead comrade—my great dead! I sat by your bedside—it was the close of day— I heard the drip of the rain on the roof of the house: The light shadowed—departing, departing— You also departing, departing— You and the light, companions in life, now, too, companions in death, Retiring to the shadow, carrying elsewhere the benediction of your sunbeams. I sat by your bedside. I held your hand: Once you opened your eyes: O look of recognition! O look of bestowal! From you to me then passed the commission of the future, From you to me that minute, from your veins to mine, Out of the flood of passage, as you slipped away with the tide, From your hand that touched mine, from your soul that touched mine, near, O so near— Filling the heavens with stars— Entered, shone upon me and out of me, the power of the spring, the seed of the rose and the wheat, As of father to son, as of brother to brother, as of god to god!