Assaulted his doom and beat on the Gates of Death:
Then prone with his arms o'er the lyre he sobbed out his pain,
And the tense chords faintly gave voice to the pulse of his breath.

And he heard it and rose, once again, with the lyre in his hand,
And smote out the cry that his white-lipped sorrow denied:
And the grief's mad ecstasy swept o'er the summer-sweet land,
And gathered the tears of all Time in the rush of its tide.

There was never a love forsaken or faith forsworn,
There was never a cry for the living or moan for the slain,
But was voiced in that great consummation of song; ay, and borne
To storm on the Gates of the land whence none cometh again.

Transcending the barriers of earth, comprehending them all
He followed the soul of his loss with the night in his eyes;
And the portals lay bare to him there; and he heard the faint call
Of his love o'er the rabble that wails by the river of sighs.

Yea, there in the mountains before him, he knew it of old,
That portal enormous of gloom, he had seen it in dreams,
When the secrets of Time and of Fate through his harmonies rolled;
And behind it he heard the dead moan by their desolate streams.

And he passed through the Gates with the light and the cloud of his
song,
Dry-shod over Lethe he passed to the chasms of hell;
And the hosts of the dead made mock at him, crying, _How long
Have we dwelt in the darkness, oh fool, and shall evermore dwell?_

_Did our lovers not love us?_ the grey skulls hissed in his face;
_Were our lips not red? Were these cavernous eyes not bright?
Yet us, whom the soft flesh clothed with such roseate grace,
Our lovers would loathe if we ever returned to their sight!_

Oh then, through the soul of the Singer, a pity so vast
Mixed with his anguish that, smiting anew on his lyre,
He caught up the sorrows of hell in his utterance at last,
Comprehending the need of them all in his own great desire.

V

And they that were dead, in his radiant music, remembered the
dawn with its low deep crimson,
Heard the murmur of doves in the pine-wood, heard the moan of the
roaming sea,
Heard and remembered the little kisses, in woods where the last of
the moon yet swims on
Fragrant, flower-strewn April nights of young-eyed lovers in Arcady;