The world has taken you, the world has won. In vain against the world's dominion We fought the fight of love against the world. For since about the tree of knowledge curled The insidious snake, the snake's voice whispering Has poisoned every fair and fruitful thing. Did not the world's voice treacherously move Even your fixed soul? Did you not hold our love Guilty of its own ardour, and the immense Sacrifice to its own omnipotence A sacrilege and not a sacrifice? Even in our love our love could not suffice (Not the rapt silence whose warm wings abound With all the holy plenitude of sound, At love's most shadowy and hushed hour of day) To keep the voices of the world away. O subtle voices, luring from the dream The dreamer, till love's very vision seem The unruffled air that phantom feet have crossed In the mute march of that processional host Whose passing is the passing of the wind; Avenging voices, hurrying behind The souls that have escaped, and yet look back Reluctantly along the flaming track; O mighty voices of the world, I have heard Between our heart-beats your reiterate word, And I have felt our heart-beats slackening. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO HIS WINDING-SHEET by ROBERT HERRICK MINIVER CHEEVY by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON IN EMULATION OF MR. COWLEYS POEM CALL'D THE MOTTO by MARY ASTELL CAUTION by FRANCES BROWN (20TH CENTURY) CRISTINA AND MONALDESCHI by ROBERT BROWNING THE FOREGOING CRITICISM, IN ENGLISH VERSE by JOHN BYROM THE MAID OF NEIDPATH by THOMAS CAMPBELL MASQUE AT THE MARRIAGE OF THE EARL OF SOMERSET: FOURTH SQUIRE by THOMAS CAMPION |