by the road that lies beyond recall
Won through the desert of the Burning Dark,
Thou shalt behold within a garden bright
A well, beside a cypress ivory-white.

Still is that well, and in its waters cool
White, white and windless, sleeps that cypress tree:
Who drinks but once from out her shadowy pool
Shall thirst no more to all eternity.
Forgetting all, by all forgotten clean,
His soul shall be with that which hath not been.

But thou, though thou be trembling with thy dread,
And parched with thy desire more fierce than flame,
Think on the stream wherefrom thy life was fed,
And that diviner fountain whence it came.
Turn thee and cry--behold, it is not far--
Unto the hills where living waters are.

{118}

"Lord, though I lived on earth, the child of earth,
Yet was I fathered by the starry sky:
Thou knowest I came not of the shadows' birth,
Let me not die the death that shadows die.
Give me to drink of the sweet spring that leaps
From Memory's fount, wherein no cypress sleeps."

Then shalt thou drink, O Soul, and therewith slake
The immortal longing of thy mortal thirst,
So of thy Father's life shalt thou partake,
And be for ever that thou wert at first.
Lost in remembered loves, yet thou more thou
With them shalt reign in never-ending Now.

{119}

_Il Santo_

Alas! alas! what impious hands are these?
They have cut down my dark mysterious trees,
Defied the brooding spell
That sealed my sacred well,
Broken my fathers' fixed and ancient bars,
And on the mouldering shade
Wherein my dead were laid
Let in the cold clear aspect of the stars.

Slumber hath held the grove for years untold:
Is there no reverence for a peace so old?
Is there no seemly awe
For bronze-engraven law,
For dust beatified and saintly name?
When they shall see the shrine
Princes have held divine,
Will they not bow before the eternal flame?

Vain! vain! the wind of heaven for ages long
Hath whispered manhood, "Let thine arm be strong!
Hew down and fling away
The growth that veils decay,

{120}

Shatter the shrine that chokes the living spring.
Scorn hatred, scorn regret,
Dig deep and deeper yet,
Leave not the quest for word of saint or king.

"Dig deeper yet! though the world brand thee now,
The faithful labour of an impious brow
May for thy race redeem
The source of that lost stream
Once given the thirst