Have they not brought it? What delays my book? I am afraid. Tell me the truth, my friends. At this last hour, the Church may yet withhold Her sanction. Not the Church, but those who think A little darkness helps her. Were this true, They would do well. If the poor light we win Confuse or blind us, to the Light of lights, Let all our wisdom perish. I affirm A greater Darkness, where the one true Church Shall after all her agonies of loss And many an age of doubt, perhaps, to come, See this processional host of splendours burn Like tapers round her altar. So I speak Not for myself, but for the age unborn. I caught the fire from those who went before, The bearers of the torch who could not see The goal to which they strained. I caught their fire, And carried it, only a little way beyond; But there are those that wait for it, I know, Those who will carry it on to victory. I dare not fail them. Looking back, I see Those others,--fallen, with their arms outstretched Dead, pointing to the future. Far, far back, Before the Egyptians built their pyramids With those dark funnels pointing to the north, Through which the Pharaohs from their desert tombs Gaze all night long upon the Polar Star, Some wandering Arab crept from death to life Led by the Plough across those wastes of pearl.... Long, long ago--have they not brought it yet? My book?--I finished it one summer's night, And felt my blood all beating into song. I meant to print those verses in my book, A prelude, hinting at that deeper night Which darkens all our knowledge. Then I thought The measure moved too lightly. Do you recall Those verses, Elsa? They would pass the time. How happy I was the night I wrote that song!" Then, one of those bowed shadows raised her head And, like a mother crooning to her child, Murmured the words he wrote, so long ago. In old Cathay, in far Cathay, Before the western world began, They saw the moving fount of day Eclipsed, as by a shadowy fan; They stood upon their Chinese wall. They saw his fire to ashes fade, And felt the deeper slumber fall On domes of pearl and towers of jade. With slim brown hands, in Araby, They traced, upon the desert sand, Their Rams and Scorpions of the sky, And strove--and failed--to understand. Before their footprints were effaced The shifting sand forgot their rune; Their hieroglyphs were all erased, Their desert naked to the moon. In Bagdad of the purple nights, Haroun Al Raschid built a tower, Where sages watched a thousand lights And read their legends, for an hour. The tower is down, the Caliph dead, Their astrolabes are wrecked with rust. Orion glitters overhead, Aladdin's lamp is in the dust.