And soon thought’s wizard ring gets disenchanted.
When earth was dayed—was morrowed—the first ray
Perched on his pen, and diamonded its way;—
The sunray that I watched; which, proud to mark
The line it loved as deathless, there died dark—
Died in the only path it would have trod,
Were there as many ways as worlds to God—
There, in the eye of God again to burn,
Ab all man’s glory unto God’s must turn.
And so may sunbeams ever guide his pen,
And God his heart, who lights the morn of men;
For this life is but Being.s first faint ray;
And sun on sun, and heaven on heaven, make up God’s day.
And were there suns in day as stars in night,
They would show but like one ray from out His full-sphered light;
As but one momentary gleam would fly;
Or, as years, the arrows of eternity.
Poets are all who love—who feel great thruths—
And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.
There was a time—oh, I remember well!
When, like a sea-shell with its seaborn strain,
My soul aye rang with music of the lyre;
And my heart shed its lore as leaves their dew—
A honey dew, and throve on what it shed.
All things I loved; but song I loved in chief.
Imagination is the air of mind;
Judgment its earth, and memory its main;
Passion its fire. I was at home in Heaven;
Swiftlike I lived above: once touching earth,
The meanest thing might master me: long wings
But baffled. Still and still I harped on song.
Oh! to create within the mind is bliss;
And, shaping forth the lofty thought, or lovely,
We seek not, need not Heaven: and when the thought—
Cloudy and shapeless, first forms on the mind,
Slow darkening into, some gigantic make,
How the heart shakes with pride and fear, as heaven
Quakes under its own thunder: or as might,
Of old, the mortal mother of a god,
When first she saw him lessening up the skies.
And I began the toil divine of verse,
Which like a burning-bush, doth guest a god.
But this was only wing-flapping—not flight;
The pawing of the courser ere he win;
Till, by degrees, from wrestling with my soul,
I gathered strength to keep the fleet thoughts fast,
And made them bless me. Yes, there was a time
When tomes of ancient song held eye and heart—
Were the sole lore I recked of: the great bards
Of Greece, of Rome, and mine own master land,
And they who in the holy book are deathless—
Men who have vulgarized sublimity,
And bought up truth for the nations; parted it,
As soldiers lotted once the garb of God—
Men who have forged gods—uttered—made them pass:
In whose words, to be read with many a heaving
Of the heart, is a power, like wind in rain—
Sons of the sons of God, who, in olden days,
Did leave their passionless Heaven for earth and woman,
Brought an immortal to a mortal breast;
And, like a rainbow clasping the sweet earth,
And melting in the covenant of love,
Left here a bright precipitate of soul,
Which lives for ever through the lines of men,
Flashing, by fits, like fire from an enemy’s front—
Whose thoughts, like bars of sunshine in shut rooms,
Mid gloom, all glory, win the world to light—
Who make their very follies like their souls;
And, like the young moon with a ragged edge,
Still, in their imperfection, beautiful—
Whose weaknesses are lovely as their strengths.
Like the white nebulous matter between stars,
Which, if not lights at least is likest light—
Men whom we build our love round like an arch
Of triumph, as they pass us on their way
To glory and to immortality;
Men whose great thoughts possess us like a passion
Through every limb and the whole heart; whose words
Haunt us as eagles haunt the mountain air;
Thoughts which command all coming times and minds,
As from a tower a warden—fix themselves
Deep in the heart as meteor stones in earth,
Dropped from some higher sphere; the words of gods,
And fragments of the undeemed tongues of Heaven.
Men who walk up to fame as to a friend
Or their own house, which from the wrongful heir
They have wrested, from the world’s hard hand and gripe—
Men who, like Death, all bone, but all unarmed,
Have ta’en the giant world by the throat, and thrown him;
And made him swear to maintain their name and fame
At peril of his life—who shed great thoughts
As easily as an oak looseneth its golden leaves
In a kindly largess to the soil it grew on—
Whose rich dark ivy thoughts, sunned o’er with love,
Flourish around the deathless stems of their names—
Whose names are ever on the world’s broad tongue,
Like sound upon the falling of a force—
Whose words, if winged, are with angels’ wings—
Who play upon the heart as on a harp,
And make our eyes bright as we speak of them—
Whose hearts have a look southwards, and are open
To the whole noon of nature—these I have waked
And wept o’er, night by night; oft pondering thus:
Homer is gone; and where is Jove? and where
The rival cities seven? His song outlives
Time, tower, and god—all that then was save Heaven.
Yea, but the poor perfections of thine earth
Shall be as little as nothing to thee here.
God must be happy, who aye makes; and since
Mind’s first of things, who makes from mind is blest
O’er men. Thus saith the bard to his work:—I am
Thy god, and bid thee live as my God me:
I live or die with thee, soul of my soul!
Thou camest and went’st, sunlike, from morn to eve:
And smiledst fire upon my heaving heart,
Like the sun in the sea, tall it arose
And dashed about its house all might and mirth,
Like ocean’s tongue in Staffa’s stormy cave.
Thou art a weakly reed to lean upon;
But, like that reed the false one filched from Heaven,
Full of immortal fire—immortal as
The breath of God’s lips—every breath a soul.
Mortal! the muse is with thee: leave her not.
Once my ambition to another end
Stirred, stretched itself, but slept again. I rose
And dashed on earth the harp, mine other heart,
Which, ringing, brake; its discord ruinous
Harmony still; and coldly I rejoiced
No other joy I had, wormlike, to feed
Upon my ripe resolve. It might not be;
The more I strove against, the more I loved it.
Come, let as walk along. So say
