No More Learning

As a fish or bird
Swims or flies, if moving,
We unseen are heard
To live on by loving.
Far above the glances
Of your eager eyes,
Listen! we are loving.
Listen, through man's ignorances--
Listen, through God's mysteries--
Listen down the heart of things,
Ye shall hear our mystic wings
Murmurous with loving.
Through the opal door
Listen evermore
How we live by loving!

_First Semichorus. _
When your bodies therefore
Reach the grave their goal,
Softly will we care for
Each enfranchised soul.
Softly and unlothly
Through the door of opal
Toward the heavenly people,
Floated on a minor fine
Into the full chant divine,
We will draw you smoothly,--
While the human in the minor
Makes the harmony diviner.
Listen to our loving!

_Second Semichorus. _
There, a sough of glory
Shall breathe on you as you come,
Ruffling round the doorway
All the light of angeldom.
From the empyrean centre
Heavenly voices shall repeat,
"Souls redeemed and pardoned, enter,
For the chrism on you is sweet! "
And every angel in the place
Lowlily shall bow his face,
Folded fair on softened sounds,
Because upon your hands and feet
He images his Master's wounds.
Listen to our loving!

_First Semichorus.
_
So, in the universe's
Consummated undoing,
Our seraphs of white mercies
Shall hover round the ruin.
Their wings shall stream upon the flame
As if incorporate of the same
In elemental fusion;
And calm their faces shall burn out
With a pale and mastering thought,
And a steadfast looking of desire
From out between the clefts of fire,--
While they cry, in the Holy's name,
To the final Restitution.
Listen to our loving!

_Second Semichorus. _
So, when the day of God is
To the thick graves accompted,
Awaking the dead bodies,
The angel of the trumpet
Shall split and shatter the earth
To the roots of the grave--
Which never before were slackened--
And quicken the charnel birth
With his blast so clear and brave
That the Dead shall start and stand erect,
And every face of the burial-place
Shall the awful, single look reflect
Wherewith he them awakened.
Listen to our loving!

_First Semichorus. _
But wild is the horse of Death!
He will leap up wild at the clamour
Above and beneath.
And where is his Tamer
On that last day,
When he crieth Ha, ha!
To the trumpet's blare,
And paweth the earth's Aceldama?
When he tosseth his head,
The drear-white steed,
And ghastlily champeth the last moon-ray--
What angel there
Can lead him away,
That the living may rule for the Dead?

_Second Semichorus. _
Yet a TAMER shall be found!
One more bright than seraph crowned,
And more strong than cherub bold,
Elder, too, than angel old,
By his grey eternities.
He shall master and surprise
The steed of Death.