I <br /> <br />In silence, solitude and stern surmise <br /> His faith was tried and proved commensurate <br /> With life and death. The stone-blind eyes of Fate <br />Perpetually stared into his eyes, <br />Yet to the hazard of the enterprise <br /> He brought his soul, expectant and elate, <br /> And challenged, like a champion at the Gate, <br />Death's undissuadable austerities. <br />And thus, full-armed in all that Truth reprieves <br /> From dissolution, he beheld the breath <br /> Of daybreak flush his thought's exalted ways, <br />While, like Dodona's sad, prophetic leaves, <br /> Round him the scant, supreme, momentous days <br /> Trembled and murmured in the wind of Death. <br /> <br />II <br /> <br />There moved a Presence always by his side, <br /> With eyes of pleasure and passion and wild tears, <br /> And on her lips the murmur of many years, <br />And in her hair the chaplets of a bride; <br />And with him, hour by hour, came one beside, <br /> Scatheless of Time and Time's vicissitude, <br /> Whose lips, perforce of endless solitude, <br />Were silent and whose eyes were blind and wide. <br />But when he died came One who wore a wreath <br /> Of star-light, and with fingers calm and bland <br /> Smoothed from his brows the trace of mortal pain; <br />And of the two who stood on either hand, <br /> "This one is Life," he said, "And this is Death, <br /> And I am Love and Lord over these twain!"<br /><br />George Cabot Lodge<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/trumbull-stickney/
