Good Toll-Gate keeper, kindle a light! The Sun has fallen: full sudden the Night: (He seemeth some ancient anchorite Who broodeth, and heedeth us not.) He heeds. @3Stay by the Gate and tell your needs!@1 Sir, we would learn the lawful toll. @3How many travellers?@1 Body and Soul. @3How long have you journeyed together thus?@1 All Day, and nothing shall sunder us. @3How have you fared? Was the roadway rough?@1 Some miles were stony and steep enough. @3But why have you toiled and suffered so? And whither is it that you would go?@1 Our goal is a vision that vanisheth. To pause is to perish: devouring Death Would slow our pulses and choke our breath. ... Tollman, teach us your name! A sage Are you, acquaint with our pilgrimage? @3No sage, yet mayhap wiser than Man, Torn with a doubt since Time began: Man the afraid, infirm, impure! Yet how he can love and how endure,— Endure to the end and arise again, Victorious victim of passion and pain .... Motley the breed that mount to my Gate: They fear their fate, yet they face their fate. Of Radiant Heat and Primal Slime Engendered, hither they creep and climb,— Ether and earth, perverse, sublime!. ... The Ongoer made me His Deputy here: Who payeth may pass, though he reckon it dear,— His quittance from clumsy, cumbering gear.@1 You are Death? @3I am Death, Devourer and Foe Or Friend and Deliverer: how may ye know? .... Slowly the Gate swings for entrance—and end: The shrouded way waits, unposted, unkenned; Time's phantasies fade: the Reals impend@1 .... Let the toll be taken! @3Nay, gallantly dare The dark passage, Soul! Body's paid the full fare— Poor clod—while you've parried and parleyed out there.@1 | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE FISH by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS TO NATURE by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE FRAGMENT THIRTY-SIX by HILDA DOOLITTLE THE YOUTH WITH RED-GOLD HAIR by EDITH SITWELL PHANTOMS ALL by HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD QUITS by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH SACRED LYRIC by ISIDORE G. ASCHER |