I <br /> <br />On immemorial altitudes august <br />Grief holds her high dominion. Bold the feet <br />That climb unblenching to that stern retreat <br />Whence, looking down, man knows himself but dust. <br />There lie the mightiest passions, earthward thrust <br />Beneath her regnant footstool, and there meet <br />Pale ghosts of buried longings that were sweet, <br />With many an abdicated “shall” and “must.” <br /> <br />For there she rules omnipotent, whose will <br />Compels a mute acceptance of her chart; <br />Who holds the world, and lo! it cannot fill <br />Her mighty hand; who will be served apart <br />With uncommunicable rites, and still <br />Surrender of the undivided heart. <br /> <br />II <br /> <br />She holds the world within her mighty hand, <br />And lo! it is a toy for babes to toss, <br />And all its shining imagery but dross, <br />To those that in her awful presence stand; <br />As sun-confronting eagles o’er the land <br />That lies below, they send their gaze across <br />The common intervals of gain and loss, <br />And hope’s infinitude without a strand. <br /> <br />But he who, on that lonely eminence, <br />Watches too long the whirling of the spheres <br />Through dim eternities, descending thence <br />The voices of his kind no longer hears, <br />And, blinded by the spectacle immense, <br />Journeys alone through all the after years.<br /><br />Edith Wharton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/grief-54/
