Page:The Dial (Volume 74).djvu/86

The river rises, and it sinks again;
One hears the rumble of it far below
Under its rocky hole.
What Median, Persian, Babylonian,
In reverie, or in vision, saw
Symbols of the soul,
Mind from mind has caught:
The subterranean streams,
Tower where a candle gleams,
A suffering passion and a labouring thought?

Two men have found it here. A man-at-arms
Gathered a score of horse and spent his days
In this tumultuous spot,
Where through long wars and sudden night alarums
His dwindling score and he seemed castaways
Forgetting and forgot;
And I, that after me
My bodily heirs may find,
To exalt a lonely mind,
Befitting emblems of adversity.

Two heavy trestles, and a board
Where Sato's gift, a changeless sword,
By pen and paper lies,
That it may moralize
My days out of their aimlessness.
A bit of an embroidered dress
Covers its wooden sheath.
Chaucer had not drawn breath
When it was forged. In Sato's house
Curved like new moon, moon luminous,
It lay five hundred years;
Yet if no change appears
No moon: only an aching heart
Conceives a changeless work of art.