Hearing far off and dim the toiling mart,
The hurrying feet, the curses without number,
And, circled with the glow Elysian,
Of thine exulting vision,
Out of its very cares wooes charms for peace and slumber.
To thee the Earth lifts up her fettered hands
And cries for vengeance; with a pitying smile
Thou blessest her, and she forgets her bands,
And her old woe-worn face a little while
Grows young and noble ; unto thee the Oppressor
Looks, and is dumb with awe;
Which makes the crime its own blindfold redresser,
Shadows his heart with perilous foreboding,
And he can see the grim-eyed Doom
From out the trembling gloom
Its silent-footed steeds toward his palace goading.
What promises hast thou for Poet's eyes,
Aweary of the turmoil and the wrong!
To all their hopes what over-joyed replies!
What undreamed ecstasies for blissful song!
Thy happy plains no war-trump's brawling clangor
Disturbs, and fools the poor to hate the poor;
The humble glares not on the high with anger;
Love leaves no grudge at less, no greed for more; In vain strives Self the godlike sense to smother; From the soul's deeps
The noble 'neath foul rags beholds his long-lost brother.
To thee the Martyr looketh, and his fires
Unlock their fangs and leave his spirit free;
To thee the Poet 'mid his toil aspires,
And grief and hunger climb about his knee
Welcome as children; thou upholdest
The lone Inventor by his demon haunted; The Prophet cries to thee when hearts are coldest, And, gazing o'er the midnight's bleak abyss, Sees the drowsed soul awaken at thy kiss, And stretch its happy arms and leap up disenchanted.
Thou bringest vengeance, but so loving kindly
The guilty thinks it pity; taught by thee
Fierce tyrants drop the scourges wherewith blindly
Their own souls they were scarring; conquerors see
With horror in their hands the accursed spear
That tore the meek One's side on Calvary,
And from their trophies shrink with ghastly fear;
Thou, too, art the Forgiver,
The beauty of man's soul to man revealing;
The arrows from thy quiver
Pierce error's guilty heart, but only pierce for healing.
O, whither, whither, glory-winged dreams,
From out Life's sweat and turmoil would ye bear me ?
Shut, gates of Fancy, on your golden gleams,
This agony of hopeless contrast spare me! Fade, cheating glow, and leave me to my night! He is a coward who would borrow
A charm against the present sorrow
From the vague Future's promise of delight:
As life's alarums nearer roll,
The ancestral buckler calls,
Self-clanging, from the walls
In the high temple of the soul;
Where are most sorrows, there the poet's sphere is,
To feed the soul with patience,
With words of unshorn truth, with love that never wearies.
"T is good to be abroad in the sun,
His gifts abide when day is done;
Each thing in nature from his cup
Gathers a several virtue up;
The grace within its being's reach
Becomes the nutriment of each,
And the same life imbibed by all
Makes each most individual :
Here the twig-bending peaches seek
The glow that mantles in their cheek-
Hence comes the Indian-summer bloom
That hazes round the basking plum,
And, from the same impartial light,
The grass sucks green, the lily white.
Like these the soul, for sunshine made,
Grows wan and gracile in the shade,
Her faculties, which God decreed
Various as Summer's dædal breed,
With one sad color are imbued,
Shut from the sun that tints their blood;
The shadow of the poet's roof
Deadens the dyes of warp and woof;
Whate'er of ancient song remains
Has fresh air flowing in its veins,
For Greece and eldest Ind knew well
That out of doors, with world-wide swell
Arches the student's lawful cell.
Away, unfruitful lore of books,
For whose vain idiom we reject
The spirit's mother-dialect,
Aliens among the birds and brooks,
Dull to interpret or believe.
What gospels lost the woods retrieve,
Or what the eaves-dropping violet
Reports from God, who walketh yet
His garden in the hush of eve!
Away, ye pedants city-bred,
Unwise of heart, too wise of head,
Who handcuff Art with thus and so,
And in each other's footprints tread,
Like those who walk through drifted snow;
Who, from deep study of brick walls
Conjecture of the water-falls,
By six square feet of smoke-stained sky
Compute those deeps that overlie
The still tarn's heaven-anointed eye,
And, in your earthen crucible,
With chemic tests essay to spell
How nature works in field and dell!
Seek we where Shakspeare buried gold?
Such hands no charmed witch-hazel hold;
To beach and rock repeats the sea
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