THE VOICE OF THE SOUL
by: Victor James Daley
(1858-1905)
- N Youth, when through our veins
runs fast
- The bright red stream of life,
- The Souls Voice is a trumpet-blast
- That calls us to the strife.
-
- The Spirit spurns its prison-bars,
- And feels with force endued
- To scale the ramparts of the stars
- And storm Infinitude.
-
- Youth passes; like a dungeon grows
- The Spirits house of clay:
- The voice that once in music rose
- In murmurs dies away.
-
- But in the day when sickness sore
- Smites on the bodys walls,
- The Souls Voice through the breach once more
- Like to a trumpet calls.
-
- Well shall it be with him who heeds
- The mystic summons then!
- His after-life with loving deeds
- Shall blossom amongst men.
-
- He shall have gifts--the gift that feels
- The germ within the clod,
- And hears the whirring of the wheels
- That turn the mills of God!
-
- The gift that sees with glance profound
- The secret soul of things,
- And in the silence hears the sound
- Of vast and viewless wings!
-
- The veil of Isis sevenfold
- To him as gauze shall be,
- Wherethrough, clear-eyed, he shall behold
- The Ancient Mystery.
-
- He shall do battle for the True,
- Defend till death the Right,
- With Shoes of Swiftness Wrong pursue,
- With Sword of Sharpness smite.
-
- And, dying, he shall haply hear,
- Like golden trumpets blown
- For joy, far voices sweet and clear--
- Soul-voices like his own.
"The Voice of the Soul"
is reprinted from The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse.
Ed. Nicholson & Lee. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1917. |
MORE POEMS BY VICTOR JAMES DALEY |
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