We are the bloodless echoes of the past,
Blown between vast and vast:
Miserable automata, we check
Each impulse at the beck
Of dead, forbidding hands. Dancing, we tread
The footsteps of the dead,
And by their laws make love; and when we sing,
Dead fingers pluck the string
And twist our music to a stale old song;
And when we walk along
Green valleys and wide fields of reddening wheat,
Grey phantoms dog our feet
And their sere joys, voiced in a tongue outworn,
Turn all our joy to scorn.
An unsubstantial shadow dulls our light,
And when we sit to write
A ghost stands by the chair to guide the pen
Lest we should write for men
Some vivid truth, some song with potency
To set the whole world free.
And when we think, ghosts in our spirits cast
Dust of a ruined past,
Lest we should see and feel and, knowing our strength,
Rise in revolt at length
Against the iniquitous tyranny of the dead.
But still we bow the head,
And still the blind obstruction of the past
Builds over us a vast