YOU fret and grieve and turn about
To make this world and living out,
With 'This is so' and 'That is so–'
Ah, sirs, we learned it long ago!

If you should make an angel tell
What Mary learned of Gabriel
Yet could you know the flaming words
That pierced her with the seven swords?
And if some fiend-snake hissed you low
All he told Eve where God's trees grow,
Yet could you learn the thing she learned
Who sobbing out of Eden turned?

We watched with smiling mother-eyes
The while you stormed, and thought you wise,
At God's great walls, as if you beat
Like babes, with angry hands and feet;
For God, who bound our feet and hands
And laid us under your commands,
Still left us silence, love, and pain,
And dreams to hide and peace to gain. . . .

Why, when you search beyond a doubt
The furthest star's last secret out,
Some woman from her nook shall smile,
Laying her needle down the while,
'Dear, that old dream I told to you?
You smiled . . . I thought you always knew!'

The thing we tell is no new thing,
A wisdom born of suffering,
That there is pain, and there is love,
And God's great silence still above,
And this is all– though you have hurled
Your strength forever on the world.
Quick, let us speak to you, ere yet
Passed from our silence we forget,
Like you, with crowds made deaf and blind,
With dealing close to humankind:
Be swift, for soon we too shall be
With no more place for memory,
Going unfettered as man goes
And scarcely wounded more– who knows?
And all our Vala-dreams shall lift
Like Tyre-smoke and Atlantis-drift . . .

* * * * * *

Listen, most dear, the while that we
At once have speech and memory.