For one prized tune is this our chord of life. ’Tis clipped to deadness with a wanton knife, In wishes that for ecstasies aspire. Yet have we glad companionship of Youth, Elysian meadows for the mind, Dare we to face deeds done, and in our tomb Filled with the parti-coloured bloom Of loved and hated, grasp all human truth Sowed by us down the mazy paths behind. To feel that heaven must we that hell sound through: Whence comes a line of continuity, That brings our middle station into view, Between those poles; a novel Earth we see, In likeness of us, made of banned and blest; The sower’s bed, but not the reaper’s rest: An Earth alive with meanings, wherein meet Buried, and breathing, and to be. Then of the junction of the three, Even as a heart in brain, full sweet May sense of soul, the sum of music, beat. Only the soul can walk the dusty track Where hangs our flowering under vapours black, And bear to see how these pervade, obscure, Quench recollection of a spacious pure. They take phantasmal forms, divide, convolve, Hard at each other point and gape, Horrible ghosts! in agony dissolve, To reappear with one they drape For criminal, and, Father! shrieking name, Who such distorted issue did beget. Accept them, them and him, though hiss thy sweat Off brow on breast, whose furnace flame Has eaten, and old Self consumes. Out of the purification will they leap, Thee renovating while new light illumes The dusky web of evil, known as pain, That heavily up healthward mounts the steep; Our fleshly road to beacon-fire of brain: Midway the tameless oceanic brute Below, whose heave is topped with foam for fruit, And the fair heaven reflecting inner peace On righteous warfare, that asks not to cease.