alive, And gathering virtue in at every pore Till it possessed me wholly, aud thought ceased, Or was transfused in something to which thought Is coarse and dull of sense. Myself was lost, Gone from me like an ache, and what remained Became a part of the universal joy. My soul went forth, and, mingling with the tree, Danced in the leaves; or, floating in the cloud, Saw its white double in the stream below: Or else, sublimed to purer ecstasy, I was the wind that dappled the lush Whose feet are known to all the popu lous ways, And many men and manners he hath seen, Not without fruit of solitary thought. He, as the habit is of lonely men,Unused to try the temper of their mind In fence with others, -positive and shy, Yet knows to put an edge upon his speech, Pithily Saxon in unwilling talk. Him I entrap with my long-suffering knife, And, while its poor blade hums away in sparks, Sharpen my wit upon his gritty mind, In motion set obsequious to his wheel, And in its quality not much unlike. The ground we meet on being primal man And nearer the deep bases of our lives. But O, half heavenly, earthly half, my soul, Canst thou from those late ecstasies descend, Thy lips still wet with the miraculous wine That transubstantiates all thy baser stuff To such divinity that soul and sense, Once more commingled in their source, are lost, Canst thou descend to quench a vulgar thirst With the mere dregs and rinsings of the world? Well, if my nature find her pleasure so, A leafless wilding shivering by the wall; Of savor whose mere harshness seemed divine. O, benediction of the higher mood And human-kindness of the lower! for both I will be grateful while I live, nor question The wisdom that hath made us what we are, With such large range as from the alehouse bench Can reach the stars and be with both at home. They tell us we have fallen on prosy days, Condemned to glean the leavings of earth's feast Where gods and heroes took delight of old; |