Thou thundercloud of spirits, darkning
The skies and wrecking earth! Could I hate men
How I should joy with thee, even as an eagle,
Nigh famished, in the fellowship of storms;
But I still love them. What will come of men?
Whatever may, perdition is their meed.
Were Heaven dispeopled for a ministry
To warn them of their ways; were thou and I
To monish them; were Heaven, and Earth, and Hell
To preach at once, they still would mock and jeer
As now; but never repent until too late;
Until the everlasting hour had struck.
Men might be better if we better deemed
Of them. The worst way to improve the world
Is to condemn it. Men may overget
Delusion—not despair.
Why love mankind?
The affections are thy systems weaknesses;
The wasteful outlets of self-maintenance.
The wild flower’s tendril, proof of feebleness,
Proves strength; and so we fling our feelings out,
The tendrils of the heart, to bear us up.
O Earth! how drear to think to tear oneself,
Even for an hour, from looks like this of thine;
From features, oh! so fair; to quit for aye
The luxury of thy side. Why, why art thou
Thus glorious, and ’twere not to sate the soul,
And chide us for the senseless dream of Heaven?
The still strong stream sweeps onward to its end,
Like one of the great purposes of God;
Or like, may be, a soul like mine to Him.
Along yon deep blue vein upon thy bosom,
Earth? I could float for ever. See it there—
Winding among its green and smiling isles,
Like Charity amidst her children dear;
Or Peace, rejoicing in her olive wreaths,
And gladdening as she glides along the lands.
And yet all this must end—must pass; drop down
Oblivion like a pebble in a pit:
For God shall lay His hand upon the earth,
And crush it up like a red leaf.
Not be?
I cannot root the thought, nor hold it firm.
This same sweet world which thou wouldst fondly deem
Eternal, may be; which I soon shall see
Destruction suck back as the tide a shell.
It will not be yet. I’ll woo thee, world, again,
And revel in thy loveliness and love.
I have a heart with room for every joy:
And since we must part sometime, while I may,
I’ll quaff the nectar in thy flowers, and press
The richest clusters of thy luscious fruit
Into the cup of my desires. I know
My years are numbered not in units yet.
But I cannot live unless I love and am loved;
Unless I have the young and beautiful
Bound up like pictures in my book of life.
It is the intensest vanity alone
Which makes us bear with life. Some seem to live,
Whose hearts are like those unenlightened stars
Of the first darkness—lifeless, timeless, useless—
With nothing but a cold night air about them;
Not suns—not planets—darkness organized:
Orbs of a desert darkness: with no soul
To light its watchfire in the wilderness,
And civilize the solitude one moment.
There are such seemingly; but how or why
They live I know not. This to me is life;
That if life be a burden, I will join
To make it but the burden of a song:
I hate the world’s coarse thought. And this is life;
To watch young beauty’s budlike feelings burst
And load the soul with love;—as that pale flower,
Which opes at eve, spreads sudden on the dark
Its yellow bloom, and sinks the air down with sweets.
Let Heaven take all that’s good—Hell all that’s foul;
Leave us the lovely! and we will ask no more.
To me it seems time all should end. The sky
Grows gray. It is not so bright nor blue as once.
Well I remember, as it were yesterday,
When earth and Heaven went happy, hand in hand,
With all the morning dew of youth about them;
With the bright unworldly hearts of youth and truth
And the maiden bosoms of the beautiful:—
Ere earth sinned, or the pure indignant Heavens
Retreated high, nigh God; when earth was all
A creeping mass alive with shapeless things:
And when there were but three things in the world—
Monsters, mountains and water: before age
Had thickened the eyes of stars; and while the sea,
Rejoicing like a ring of saints round God,
Or Heaven on Heaven about some newborn sun,
In its sublime samesoundingness, laughed out
And cried not I! Like God I never rest.
God hath his rest; earth hers. Let me have mine.
Yet must I look on thee, fair scene, again,
Ere I depart. The glory of the world
Is on all hands. In one encircling ken,
I gaze on river, sea, isle, continent,
Mountain, and wood, and wild, and fire-lipped hill,
And lake, and golden plain, and sun, and Heaven,
Where the stars brightly die, whose death is day;
City and port and palace, ships and tents,
Lie massed and mapped before me. All is here.
The elements of the world are at my feet,
Above me and about me. Now would I
Be and do somewhat beside that I am.
Canst thou not give me some ethereal slave,
Of the pure essence of an element—
Such as my bondless brain hath oft times drawn
In the divine insanity of dreams—
To stand before me and obey me, spirit?
Call out, and see if aught arise to thee.
Green dewy Earth, who standest at my feet,
Singing and pouring sunshine on thy head,
As näiad native water, speak to me!
I am thy son. Canst thou not now, as once,
Bring forth some being dearer, liker to thee
Than is my race—Titan or tiny fay,
Stream-nymph or wood-nymph? She hath ceased to speak,
Like God, except in thunder, or to look
Unless in lightning. Miracles, with earth,
Are out of fashion as with Heaven.
More’s
The pity. Call elsewhere! Old Earth is hard
Of hearing, maybe.
I beseech thee, Sea!
Tossing thy wavy locks in sparkling play,
Like to a child awakening with the light
To laughter. Canst not thou disgulph for me,
From thy deep bosom, deep as Heaven is high,
Of all thy sea-gods one, or sea-maids?
None!
I half despair. Fire! that art slumbering there,
Like some stern warrior in his rocky fort,
After the vast invasion of the world,
Hast not some flaming imp, or messenger
Of empyrean element, to whom,
In virtue of his nature, are both known
The secrets of the burning, central, void below,
And yon bright Heaven, out of whose aëry
