Singing Man: A Book of Songs and Shadows — The Long Lane

THE LONG LANE

All through the summer night, down the long lane in flower, The moon-white lane, All through the summer night,--dim as a shower, Glimmer and fade the Twain: Over the cricket hosts, throbbing the hour by hour, Young voices bloom and wane.

Down the long lane they go, and past one window, pale With visions silver-blurred;

Stirring the heart that waits,--the eyes that fail After a spring deferred.

Query, and hush, and Ah!

--dim through a moon-lit veil, The same one word.

Down the long lane, entwined with all the fragrance there;

The lane in flower somehow With youth, and plighted hands, and star-strewn air, And muted 'Thee' and 'Thou':-- All the wild bloom and reach of dreams that never were, --Never to be, now.

So, in the throbbing dark, where ebbs the old refrain, A starved heart hears.

And silver-bright, and silver-blurred again With moonlight and with tears.

All the long night they go, down the long summer lane, The long, long years.

_Ah but, Belovèd, men may do All things to music;--march, and die;

And wear the longest vigil through, ...

And say good-by.

All things to music!

--Ah, but where Peace never falls upon the air;-- These city-ways of dark and din Where greed has shut and barred them in!

And thundering, swart against the sky, That whirlwind,--never to go by-- Of tracks and wheels, that overhead Beat back the senses with their roar And menace of undying war,-- War--war--for daily bread!

_ _All things to silence!

Ah, but where Men dwell not, but must make a lair;-- And Sorrow may not sit alone, Nor Love hear music of its own;

And Thought that strives to breast that sea Must struggle even for memory.

Day-long, night-long,--besieging din To thrust all pain the deeper in!

-- And drown the flutter of first-breath;

And batter at the doors of Death.

To lull their dearest:--watch their dead;

While the long thunders overhead, Gather and break for evermore, Eternal tides--eternal War, War--war--Bread--bread!

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