The creeds lie in the hollow of men's hearts
Like festering pools glassing their own corruption:
The slimy eyes stare up with dull approval,
And answer not when thy bright starry feet
Move on the watery floors.
O wilt thou hear me when I cry to thee?
I am a child lost in a mighty forest;
The air is thick with voices, and strange hands
Reach through the dusk and pluck me by the skirts.
There is a voice which sounds like words from home,
But, as I stumble on to reach it, seems
To leap from rock to rock. Oh! if it is
Willing obliquity of sense, descend,
Heal all my wanderings, take me by the hand,
And lead me homeward through the shadows.
Let me not by my wilful acts of pride
Block up the windows of thy truth, and grow
A wasted, withered thing, that stumbles on
Down to the grave with folded hands of sloth
And leaden confidence.
There was more of it, as my type indicates. Full of faults, I have
given so much to my reader, just as it stood upon Ericson's blotted
papers, the utterance of a true soul 'crying for the light.' But I
give also another of his poems, which Robert read at the same time,
revealing another of his moods when some one of the clouds of holy
doubt and questioning love which so often darkened his sky, did at
length
Turn forth her silver lining on the night:
SONG.
They are blind and they are dead:
We will wake them as we go;
There are words have not been said;
There are sounds they do not know.
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