labour of thy lonely mind
On weary tasks of prose. What wilt thou find
To comfort thee for all the toil and pain?
What solace, now thy sacrifice is vain
And thou art left forsaken, poor, and blind?
Like organ-music comes the deep reply:
“The cause of truth looks lost, but shall be won.
For God hath given to mine inward eye
Vision of England soaring to the sun.
And granted me great peace before I die,
In thoughts of lowly duty bravely done.”
O bend again above thine organ-board,
Thou blind old poet longing for repose!
Thy Master claims thy service not with those
Who only stand and wait for His reward;
He pours the heavenly gift of song restored
Into thy breast, and bids thee nobly close
A noble life, with poetry that flows
In mighty music of the major chord.
Where hast thou learned this deep, majestic strain,
Surpassing all thy youthful lyric grace,
To sing of Paradise? Ah, not in vain
The griefs that won at Dante’s side thy place,
And made thee, Milton, by thy years of pain,
The loftiest poet of the English race!
Wordsworth
Wordsworth, thy music like a river rolls
Among the mountains, and thy song is fed
By living springs far up the watershed;
No whirling flood nor parching drought controls
The crystal current: even on the shoals
It murmurs clear and sweet; and when its bed
Deepens below mysterious cliffs of dread,
Thy voice of peace grows deeper in our souls.
But thou in youth hast known the breaking stress
Of passion, and hast trod despair’s dry ground
Beneath black thoughts that wither and destroy.
Ah, wanderer, led by human tenderness
Home to the heart of Nature, thou hast found
The hidden Fountain of Recovered Joy.
Keats
The melancholy gift Aurora gained
From Jove, that her sad lover should not see
The face of death, no goddess asked for thee,
My Keats! But when the scarlet blood-drop stained
Thy pillow, thou didst read the fate ordained—
Brief life, wild love, a flight of poesy!
And then—a shadow fell on Italy:
Thy star went down before its brightness waned.
Yet thou hast won the gift Tithonus missed:
Never to feel the pain of growing old,
Nor lose the blissful sight of beauty’s truth,
But with the ardent lips Urania kissed
To breathe thy song, and, ere thy heart grew cold,
Become the Poet of Immortal Youth.
Shelley
Knight-errant of the Never-ending Quest,
And Minstrel of the Unfulfilled Desire;
For ever tuning thy frail earthly lyre
To some unearthly music, and possessed
With painful passionate longing to invest
The golden dream of Love’s immortal fire
With mortal robes of beautiful attire,
And fold perfection to thy throbbing breast!
What wonder, Shelley, that the restless wave
Should claim thee and the leaping flame consume
Thy drifted form on Viareggio’s beach?
These were thine elements—thy fitting grave.
But still thy soul rides on with fiery plume,
Thy wild song rings in ocean’s yearning speech!
Robert Browning
How blind the toil that burrows like the mole,
In winding graveyard pathways underground,
For Browning’s lineage! What if men have found
Poor footmen or rich merchants on the roll
Of his forbears? Did they beget his soul?
Nay, for he came of ancestry renowned
Through all the world—the poets laurel-crowned
With wreaths from which the autumn takes no toll.
The blazons on his coat-of-arms are these:
The flaming sign of Shelley’s heart on fire,
The golden globe of Shakespeare’s human stage,
The staff and scrip of Chaucer’s pilgrimage,
The rose of Dante’s deep, divine desire,
The tragic mask of wise Euripides.
Longfellow
In a great land, a new land, a land full of labour and riches and confusion,
Where there were many running to and fro, and shouting, and striving together,
In the midst of the hurry and the troubled noise, I heard the voice of one singing.
“What are you doing there, O man, singing quietly amid all this tumult?
This is the time for new inventions, mighty shoutings, and blowings of the trumpet.”
But he answered, “I am only shepherding my sheep with music.”
So he went along his chosen way, keeping his little flock around him;
And he paused to listen, now and then, beside the antique fountains,
Where the faces of forgotten gods were refreshed with musically falling waters;
Or he sat for a while at the blacksmith’s door, and heard the cling-clang of the anvils;
Or he rested beneath old steeples full of bells, that showered their chimes upon him;
Or he walked along the border of the sea, drinking in the long roar of the billows;
Or he sunned himself in the pine-scented shipyard, amid the tattoo of the mallets;
Or he leaned on the rail of the bridge, letting his thoughts flow with the whispering river;
He hearkened also to ancient tales, and made them young again with his singing.
Then a flaming arrow of death fell on his flock, and pierced the heart of his dearest!
Silent the music now, as the shepherd entered the mystical temple of sorrow:
Long he tarried in darkness there: but when he came out he was singing.
And I saw the faces of men and women and children silently turning toward him;
The youth setting out on the journey of life, and the old man waiting beside the last mile-stone;
The toiler sweating beneath his load; and the happy mother rocking her cradle;
The lonely sailor on far-off seas; and the gray-minded scholar in his book-room;
The mill-hand bound to a clacking machine; and the hunter in the forest;
And the solitary soul hiding friendless in the wilderness of the city;
Many human faces, full of care and longing, were drawn irresistibly toward him,
By the charm of something known to every heart, yet very strange and lovely,
And at the sound of his singing wonderfully all their faces were lightened.
“Why do you listen, O you people, to this old and world-worn music?
This is not for you, in the splendour of a new age, in the democratic triumph!
Listen to the clashing cymbals, the big drums, the brazen trumpets of your poets.”
But the people made no answer, following in their hearts
