SOMEWHERE in space there is a realm where lingers
Each word that ever fell from lips of man,
All music stirred to life by touch of fingers,
All sounds since time began.
Rumble of quaking earth and plains upturning
Creation morn; the sullen beat of rain,
The coo of dove with olive-leaf returning,
The stir of life again.
A Child’s soft treble in the temple, heeded
By doctors who about him listening drew;
“Father, forgive them,” on dark Calvary pleaded,
“They know not what they do.”
The songs are there which echoed through dim ages,
And chants of kneeling priests at pagan shrines,
The speech of prophets writ on history’s pages
In God-directed lines.
There dormant dwells the roar of battle royal,
The clash of arms amid war’s furnace flame,
Victorious cries of warriors brave and loyal,
A people’s loud acclaim;
With words that gladdened hearts of earliest lovers,
And curses since night’s robes trailed Eden’s sky,
While vague as half-remembered dreams there hovers
Each mother’s lullaby.
O sounds afar in ether spaces dwelling,
In mighty minstrelsy awake! Unite
In chords the story of the æons telling
Since stars first gemmed the night.