Grief
Edith Wharton
I On immemorial altitudes august Grief holds her high dominion. Bold the feet That climb unblenching to that stern retreat Whence, looking down, man knows himself but dust. There lie the mightiest passions, earthward thrust Beneath her regnant footstool, and there meet Pale ghosts of buried longings that were sweet, With many an abdicated “shall” and “must.” For there she rules omnipotent, whose will Compels a mute acceptance of her chart; Who holds the world, and lo! it cannot fill Her mighty hand; who will be served apart With uncommunicable rites, and still Surrender of the undivided heart. II She holds the world within her mighty hand, And lo! it is a toy for babes to toss, And all its shining imagery but dross, To those that in her awful presence stand; As sun-confronting eagles o’er the land That lies below, they send their gaze across The common intervals of gain and loss, And hope’s infinitude without a strand. But he who, on that lonely eminence, Watches too long the whirling of the spheres Through dim eternities, descending thence The voices of his kind no longer hears, And, blinded by the spectacle immense, Journeys alone through all the after years.
