Brother, what news out of the night, what word From the frontiers of mind beyond our ken, Of mysteries unimagined yet of men, Compassed by travail of your spirit? O Could you but reach to us! Could we but know Across the imperturbable old Dark Some answering glimmer of the ancient Spark Lifted--some token, tangible to sense, Of the indomitable Intelligence That thrones on matter--language visible-- Crying, “Eternity--and all is well! Brother, be of good cheer; we, too, have known! Not lonely moves, not utterly alone, Your sad fraternity through the dark of God: But the confederate legions are abroad, Life’s flag advances on the starry way, And Consciousness, still battling, still at bay, Holds the bright forts against Oblivion--” What answering thrill would ’round the planet run! For we are one; all Consciousness is one, Whatever form it wear, however dressed In gray or glamour, in whatever breast It lift its longing: glimmering it moves Through the green wave; it stamps with startled hooves The upland pastures of the world, and soars In heaven with the eagle; on bright shores It basks a sunny body, or in dread Lifts from the undergrowth a snaky head And darts a flickering tongue; it is most clear In the lark’s throat; among the grasses here, That couch the ant, it turns a tiny eye Around the darkness; scampers and is shy In the scared rabbit; through the murmuring air Wheels with the beetle, and, where heaven is bare, Southward with the wild crane at summer’s close, Hungering, an eternal pilgrim goes On quests implacable. And from the eyes Of the poised panther gleam the cruelties Of its stern need that roams the world, and rends With tooth or talon; in the hawk descends On the stunned squirrel; in the squirrel moans As the hawk strikes; darkens the earth with bones Of its own wreck and, hungering again, Knows in its body the old spur. For when Hunger, the shadow cast by death, draws near, Life on her thousand thrones feels the one fear, And in the lion’s roar at dusk is heard The unassuagable, insistent word Of urgent Being, clamorous to be. Wreaking and wrought upon, eternally Mingling and mixed; inextricably blent, Victor and vanquished, in one sacrament-- Body with body--of delight and death, It moves in splendor; lifts the shuddering breath Of the spent stag; and in the mind of Man Rebels against the miserable plan-- Flings its frail web of thought across the path Of suns in heaven, and in holy wrath, On blood of murdered brothers nourished, still Thunders to all the world, _Thou shall not kill_! And the worm’s death is in the sparrow’s song.