A Faust in colours with the good and ill
For ever at their conflict, dumb of speech,
Nor drawing gladiator-like to each,
But armour'd in the panoply of will.
The ages with their trailing shadows wait,
And Time, the white field-marshal with keen eyes,
Surveys the struggle, while the passive skies
Bend and come nearer as if drawn by fate.
Thou thinkest God has hid himself, but, lo!
His awful shadow, or a part, at least,
Of that which is His shadow, dawns to view
In the young day, that, with its plumes aglow,
All silently behind the silent Two
Climbs the blue stair-way of the one-starr'd east.