to spectral, and upon
The changing mist wavered, and were gone....

"Standing to-day your father's grave beside,
I knew my heart with his was covered there;
O, more than flesh did in the cold earth hide--
My past, his promise. There was none to care
Save for the body of a prince that died
As princes die; there was none whispered, 'Where
Moves now among us his unburied part?
What breast beats with the pulses of his heart?'

"--Vain thoughts are these that but a dying man
Searches among the dark caves of his mind!
But as I stood, the very wind that ran
Between the files breathed more than common wind,
As though the gods of men when Time began,
Fathers of fathers of old humankind,
Startled, heard now the changeful future knock;
And their lament it was from rock to rock

"Tossed with the wind's long echo ... O, speak not,
Nor tell me with my loss I am so dazed,
That my tongue speaks unfaithfully my thought;
That you, you too, within his shadow raised,
Stand bare now, wanting all you held or thought,
By aimless love or prisoned grief amazed.
Tell me not: let me out of silence speak,
Or let me still my thoughts in silence break."

And so both stood, and not a word to say,
By silence overborne, until at last
The young man breathed, "Look how the end of day
Falls heavily, as though the earth were cast
Into a shapeless soundless pit, where ray
Of heavenly light never the verge has past.
Yet will the late moon's light anon shine here,
And then gray light, and then the sun's light clear.

"Sire, 'twas my father died, and like night's pit
Soundless and shapeless yawn my orphaned years.
And yet I know morn comes and brings with it
Old tasks again, and new joys, hopes and fears.
Or sword or plough these fingers will find fit,
And morrows end with other cries and tears,
With women's arms and children's voices and
The sacred gods blessing the new-sown land.

"But look, upon your beard the dew is bright,
Chill is the winter fall: let us go in."
Then moved they slowly downward till a light
Shining the door-post and thonged door between
Showed the square Prince's House. Out of the night
They passed the sudden rubied warmth within.
Curled shadowy by the wall a servant slept:
A sleepy hound from the same corner crept.

Soon were they couched. The young man fell asleep;
While the old Prince drowsing uneasily,
Tossing on the crest of agitations deep,
Dreamed waking, waking dreamed