Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A VISION OF SAINTS: INTRODUCTION, by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907)


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A VISION OF SAINTS: INTRODUCTION, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Once, long years since, I dreamt a dream of greece
Last Line: To meet the long-lost day. And thus my guide:
Subject(s): Saints


ONCE, long years since, I dreamt a dream of Greece
And fair fantastic tales of Nymph and Faun
And thin heroic forms, and ghostly gods
Floating in loveliness by grove and hill
And lake-side, all the joyous innocent grace
Of the old Pagan fancies; mixt with tales
Of passion and unhappy deeds of old,
Dark, unforgotten.
Yesternight I knew
Another dream, a vision of old Rome,
Sterner and harsher, and the new-born grace
Of sacrifice; of life which for the Truth
Bore misery to the death, while they, the blithe
Faint gods of Fancy, grew to fiends of Ill
Athirst for pain and blood, and the old grace
To the new suffering, and the careless lives
That were content to enjoy, and asked no more
Than some brief glimpse of Beauty ere they died,
To grave bent brows, and tortured limbs, and all
The armoury of pain.
And once again,
As the great Master passed to Paradise,
With a celestial guide, I seemed to tread
Where in the infinite Empyrean dwell
The blessed company of Saints, and move,
Conveyed by soaring wings to highest Heaven,
'Midst those who bare of old the victor's palm
And wore the crown -- martyr and eremite,
Lives spent in toil for God, or fired with love,
An infinite concourse pure and white as snow;
While far away on that unbounded air
Scarce reached by sight were saints of hoary eld,
Who by old Nile or the Chaldaean plain,
Through grave lives lighted by a certain hope,
Foreknew the weighing of the soul for doom,
And that unaided, darkling way which threads
The Valley of the Shadow, and passed to life
Dim centuries, ere yet the Lawgiver
Strode from the fiery Hill with face aflame,
Down to the listening Tribes.
Not of old days
Were all the souls I saw, nor yet of Rome,
In birth or faith, but down long vistas gray
Of centuries we fared, by endless ranks
Of sanctity, cloistered or secular,
But all of Heaven; and later born in time,
Preachers inspired and ministering souls
Of women, whom no vow nor cell immured,
But a great pity drew and pious care
For fallen lives, and those who in the world,
Not of it -- poets, thinkers, lawgivers,
Lovers of Country, of the Race, of God,
High souls and just who wrought in sight of all,
Toilers obscure who worked their work and died --
Bloom, in all time, the innumerable throng
That, year by year, the Eternal Seasons raise
To make our poor world sweet.
All these I saw,
A concourse vast of every race and tribe
And tongue; till as I gazed, a shining band
New risen, and bearing on their front the mark
Of our quotidian life and modern speech,
Streamed through the boundless vast; and as we passed
Those saints long risen, or mortal yesterday,
I questioned him who led me of the lives
And fate of some, and he, with solemn speech,
Made answer as we went.

But ere we came
To real lives, lived upon earth for Heaven,
Two gracious legends, like the vanished tales
Of older Greece, twin dreams within my dream,
Each with its precious, hidden treasure, took
My eyes awhile, twin truths on which are built
Our newer, higher hopes, but of old time
Unknown or dimly felt -- the blessed dream
Which all have dreamt and shall, of life which ends not
With the last breath, but, to some finer air
Escaping, doth renew itself and press
To what high work we know not, in some sphere
Unreached by thought, yet sure; and one the strength
Of weakness, when the too strong soul bows low
Before God's will, and doth exalt itself
Through self-surrender. These, the corner-stones
Of all our Faith, my guide, in parables
Part true, part feigned, declared to me, and I
Listened with eager ears.
And first I seemed
To greet a joyous, radiant company,
Seven comely youths who, fresh from secular sleep,
From out a caverned hillside issued blithe
To meet the long-lost day. And thus my guide:





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