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 Soul’s 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 Spirit’s house of clay:
      The voice that once in music rose
      In murmurs dies away.
       
      But in the day when sickness sore
      Smites on the body’s walls,
      The Soul’s 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.

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