Explore "Ye who are to Sing" by Olive Tilford Dargan on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
O silence of all silences, where wait / Fame's unblown years whose choir my soul would greet! / Graves, nor dead Time, are sealed so dumb in fate, / For Death and Time must pass on echoing feet. / No grass-locked vault, no sculptured winding-sheet, / No age-embalmed hour with mummied wing, / Is bosomed in such stillness, vast, complete, / As wraps the future, and no prayer may bring / From that unfathomed pause one minstrel murmuring.
Yet never earth a lyreless dawn shall know; / No moon shall move unharped to her pale home; / No midnight wreathe its chain of choric glow / But answering eye flash rhythmic to the dome. / No path shall lie too deep in forest gloam / For the blithe singer's tread; no winds fore'er / Blow lute-lorn barks o'er unawakened foam; / Nor hidden isle sleep so enwaved but there / Shall touch and land at last Apollo's mariner.