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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: James Edward Fitzgerald Volume

I

I.

vignette

1.
Piercing the mist-clad mountain range which bounds
The world of sight and sense, a cavern leads
To the unknown beyond; from which no sounds
Are ever heard, nor ever light proceeds:
Silent and dark its portal yawns for all,
Blanching the cheeks on which its awful shadows fall

2.
A river thro' that valley ever flows,
Life's murm'ring tide; and evermore the hills
Which bound the vale, from their dark wombs disclose
The sources of innumerable rills,
Which to that mystic stream their tribute bear,
Whose waters in that cavern ever disappear.

3.
Each atom of that stream a human life,
In darkness risen, and in darkness lost;
The mass deep buried in the watera's strife,
A favor'd few upon the wave-tops toss'd;
Till high and low alike are lost to sight
Beneath that silent arch where reigns eternal night.

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4.
Sad type those waters of the feverish crowd
Struggling for transient fame or wealth or power,
Strong youth, and failing age, the poor, the proud,
Eager to grasp the bauble of the hour;
Whilst still th' inexorable current draws
Each one at last within that ghastly cavern's jaws.

5.
In childhood some, some in bright youth, are swept
By the strong eddies 'neath the archway's gloom;
By grief or sickness stricken, some are kept
Long ling'ring on the threshold of their doom:
In the same gulf unconscious infants sink,
And age's palsied footsteps totter o'er the brink.

6.
With outstretch'd hand and wild despairing shriek
Some grasp in terror the last shreds of life;
Some with dull mien in silent darkness seek
To find a long-sought rest from long-borne strife;
To bury shame or crime in voiceless sleep
Into the dread abyss some desperately leap.

7.
Th' assassin's blood-stained hand, forestalling time,
It's victim oftimes hurls beyond the brink;
And countless myriads in manhood's prime
In the dark vault from battle's carnage sink;
And oft pale pestilence with poisonous breath
Swells swift and deep the current 'neath the arch of death.

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8.
In joyful resignation to the goal
Some move with patient step and hope-lit eyes,
Uprais'd to where the luminous clouds unroll
The mystic splendours of the lustrous skies;
Dreaming that past that cavern's awful gloom,
More glorious skies will shine a welcome to their home.

9.
Such the sad emblem of humanity,
But for convictions lurking in the mind
Dim but unquenchable, which underlie
All thought upon the destiny of mankind;
That when th' external record we unfold
Of man from birth to death, the tale is not all told.

10.
Secret convictions that the race of man,
Product of nature, but endow'd with soul,
Has wider sphere than lies in this life's span,
Has some enduring part in that vast whole,
Where present, past, and future all unite,
And vanish in th' immeasurable infinite.

11.
Are these vain speculations? all unsought,
When pondering upon man's destiny,
They steal like awful ghosts upon the thought
With whisper'd questionings which ask reply,
Unsatisfied that faith in formal creeds
The duty and the rights of reason supersedes.