In Hoc Signo Vinces! Poem by Emma Alice Browne

Beneath the solemn stars that light
The dread infinitudes of night,
Mid wintry solitudes that lie
Where lonely Hecla's toweling pyre
Reddens an awful space of sky
With Thor's eternal altar fire!
Worn with the fever of unrest,
And spent with years of eager quest,
Beneath the vaulted heaven they stood,
Pale, haggard eyed, of garb uncouth,
The seekers of the Hidden Good,
The searchers for Eternal Truth!

From fiery Afric's burning sands,
From Asia's hoary templed lands,
From the pale borders of the North,
From the far South-the fruitful West,
O, long ago each journeyed forth,
Led hither by one glorious quest!
And each, with pilgrim staff and shoon,
Bore on his scrip a mystic rune,
Some maxim of his chosen creed,
By which, with swerveless rule and line,
He shaped his life in word and deed
To ends heroic and divine!

Around their dreary winter world
The great ice-kraken dimly curled
The white seas of the frozen zone;
And like a mighty lifted shield
The hollow heavens forever shone
On gleaming fiord and pathless field!
Behind them, in the nether deep,
The central fires, that never sleep,
Grappled and rose, and fell again;
And with colossal shock and throe
The shuddering mountain rent in twain
Her garments of perpetual snow!

Then Aba Seyd, grave-eyed and grand,
Stood forth with lifted brow and hand;
Kingly of height, of mien sublime,
Like glorious Saul among his peers,
With matchless wisdom for all time
Gleaned from the treasure house of years;
His locks rose like an eagle's crest,
His gray beard stormed on cheek and breast,
His silvery voice sonorous rang,
As when, exulting in the fray,
Where lances hissed and trumpets sang,
He held the Bedouin hordes at bay.

'Lo! Here we part: henceforth alone
We journey to the goal unknown;
But whatsoever paths we find,
The ties of fellowship shall bind
Our constant souls; and soon or late-
We laboring still in harmony-
The grand results for which we wait
Shall crown the mighty years to be!
Now scoffed at, baffled, and beset,
We grope in twilight darkness yet,
We who would found the age of gold,
Based on the universal good,
And forge the links that yet shall hold
The world in common Brotherhood!

'O, comrades of the Mystic Quest!
Who seek the Highest and the Best!
Where'er the goal for which we strive-
Whate'er the knowledge we may win-
This truth supreme shall live and thrive,
'Tis love that makes the whole world kin!
The love sublime and purified,
That puts all dross of self aside
To live for others-to uphold
Before our own a brother's cause:
This is the master power shall mould
The nobler customs, higher laws!

'Then shall all wars, all discords cease,
And, rounded to perpetual peace,
The bounteous years shall come and go
Unvexed; and all humanity,
Nursed to a loftier type, shall grow
Like to that image undefiled,
That fair reflex of Deity,
Who, first, beneath the morning skies
And glowing palms of paradise,
A God-like man, awoke and smiled!'
Like some weird strain of music, spent
In one full chord, the sweet voice ceased;
A faint white glow smote up the east,
Like wings uplifting-and a cry
Of winds went forth, as if the night
Beneath the brightening firmament
Had voiced, in hollow prophecy,
The affirmation: 'By and by!'