Think me not unkind and rudeThat I walk alone in grove and glen;I go to the god of the woodTo fetch his word to men.Tax not my sloth that IFold my arms beside the brook;Each cloud that floated in the skyWrites a letter in my book.Chide me not, laborious band,For the idle flowers I brought;Every aster in my handGoes home loaded with a thought.There was never mysteryBut 'tis figured in the flowers;Was never secret historyBut birds tell it in the bowers.One harvest from thy fieldHomeward brought the oxen strong;A second crop thine acres yield,Which I gather in a song.
Thy trivial harp will never pleaseOr fill my craving ear;Its chords should ring as blows the breeze,Free, peremptory, clear.No jingling serenader's art,Nor tinkle of piano strings,Can make the wild blood startIn its mystic springs.The kingly bardMust smite the chords rudely and hard,As with hammer or with mace;That they may render backArtful thunder, which conveysSecrets of the solar track,Sparks of the supersolar blaze.Merlin's blows are strokes of fate,Chiming with the forest tone,When boughs buffet boughs in the wood;Chiming with the gasp and moanOf the ice-imprisoned flood;With the pulse of manly hearts;With the voice of orators;With the din of city arts;With the cannonade of wars;With the marches of the brave;And prayers of might from martyrs' cave.Great is the art,Great be the manners, of the bard.He shall not his brain encumberWith the coil of rhythm and number;But, leaving rule and pale forethought,He shall aye climbFor his rhyme.'Pass in, pass in,' the angels say,'In to the upper doors,Nor count compartments of the floors,But mount to paradiseBy the stairway of surprise.'Blameless master of the games,King of sport that never shames,He shall daily joy dispenseHid in song's sweet influence.Forms more cheerly live and go,What time the subtle mindSings aloud the tune wheretoTheir pulses beat,And march their feet,And their members are combined.By Sybarites beguiled,He shall no task decline;Merlin's mighty lineExtremes of nature reconciled,—Bereaved a tyrant of his will,And made the lion mild.Songs can the tempest still,Scattered on the stormy air,Mould the year to fair increase,And bring in poetic peace.He shall not seek to weave,In weak, unhappy times,Efficacious rhymes;Wait his returning strength.Bird that from the nadir's floorTo the zenith's top can soar,—The soaring orbit of the muse exceeds that journey's length.Nor profane affect to hitOr compass that, by meddling wit,Which only the propitious mindPublishes when 't is inclined.There are open hoursWhen the God's will sallies free,And the dull idiot might seeThe flowing fortunes of a thousand years;—Sudden, at unawares,Self-moved, fly-to the doors.Nor sword of angels could revealWhat they conceal.
The rhyme of the poetModulates the king's affairs;Balance-loving NatureMade all things in pairs.To every foot its antipode;Each color with its counter glowed;To every tone beat answering tones,Higher or graver;Flavor gladly blends with flavor;Leaf answers leaf upon the bough;And match the paired cotyledons.Hands to hands, and feet to feet,In one body grooms and brides;Eldest rite, two married sidesIn every mortal meet.Light's far furnace shines,Smelting balls and bars,Forging double stars,Glittering twins and trines.The animals are sick with love,Lovesick with rhyme;Each with all propitious TimeInto chorus wove.Like the dancers' ordered band,Thoughts come also hand in hand;In equal couples mated,Or else alternated;Adding by their mutual gage,One to other, health and age.Solitary fancies goShort-lived wandering to and fro,Most like to bachelors,Or an ungiven maid,Not ancestors,With no posterity to make the lie afraid,Or keep truth undecayed.Perfect-paired as eagle's wings,Justice is the rhyme of things;Trade and counting useThe self-same tuneful muse;And Nemesis,Who with even matches odd,Who athwart space redressesThe partial wrong,Fills the just period,And finishes the song.Subtle rhymes, with ruin rife,Murmur in the house of life,Sung by the Sisters as they spin;In perfect time and measure theyBuild and unbuild our echoing clay.As the two twilights of the dayFold us music-drunken in.
Bring me wine, but wine which never grewIn the belly of the grape,Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through,Under the Andes to the Cape,Suffer no savor of the earth to scape.Let its grapes the morn saluteFrom a nocturnal root,Which feels the acrid juiceOf Styx and Erebus;And turns the woe of Night,By its own craft, to a more rich delight.We buy ashes for bread;We buy diluted wine;Give me of the true,—Whose ample leaves and tendrils curledAmong the silver hills of heavenDraw everlasting dew;Wine of wine,Blood of the world,Form of forms, and mould of statures,That I intoxicated,And by the draught assimilated,May float at pleasure through all natures;The bird-language rightly spell,And that which roses say so well.Wine that is shedLike the torrents of the sunUp the horizon walls,Or like the Atlantic streams, which runWhen the South Sea calls.Water and bread,Food which needs no transmuting,Rainbow-flowering, wisdom-fruiting,Wine which is already man,Food which teach and reason can.Wine which Music is,—Music and wine are one,—That I, drinking this,Shall hear far Chaos talk with me;Kings unborn shall walk with me;And the poor grass shall plot and planWhat it will do when it is man.Quickened so, will I unlockEvery crypt of every rock.I thank the joyful juiceFor all I know;—Winds of rememberingOf the ancient being blow,And seeming-solid walls of useOpen and flow.Pour, Bacchus! the remembering wine;Retrieve the loss of me and mine!Vine for vine be antidote,And the grape requite the lote!Haste to cure the old despair,—Reason in Nature's lotus drenched,The memory of ages quenched;Give them again to shine;Let wine repair what this undid;And where the infection slid,A dazzling memory revive;Refresh the faded tints,Recut the aged prints,And write my old adventures with the penWhich on the first day drew,Upon the tablets blue,The dancing Pleiads and eternal men.
What care I, so they stand the same,—Things of the heavenly mind,—How long the power to give them nameTarries yet behind?Thus far to-day your favors reach,O fair, appeasing presences!Ye taught my lips a single speech,And a thousand silences.Space grants beyond his fated roadNo inch to the god of day;And copious language still bestowedOne word, no more, to say.
There is no architectCan build as the Muse can;She is skilful to selectMaterials for her plan;Slow and warily to chooseRafters of immortal pine,Or cedar incorruptible,Worthy her design,She threads dark Alpine forestsOr valleys by the sea,In many lands, with painful steps,Ere she can find a tree.She ransacks mines and ledgesAnd quarries every rock,To hew the famous adamantFor each eternal block—She lays her beams in music,In music every one,To the cadence of the whirling worldWhich dances round the sun—That so they shall not be displacedBy lapses or by wars,But for the love of happy soulsOutlive the newest stars.
Trees in groves,Kine in droves,In ocean sport the scaly herds,Wedge-like cleave the air the birds,To northern lakes fly wind-borne ducks,Browse the mountain sheep in flocks,Men consort in camp and town,But the poet dwells alone.God, who gave to him the lyre,Of all mortals the desire,For all breathing men's behoof,Straitly charged him, 'Sit aloof;'Annexed a warning, poets say,To the bright premium,—Ever, when twain together play,Shall the harp be dumb.Many may come,But one shall sing;Two touch the string,The harp is dumb.Though there come a million,Wise Saadi dwells alone.Yet Saadi loved the race of men,—No churl, immured in cave or den;In bower and hallHe wants them all,Nor can dispenseWith Persia for his audience;They must give ear,Grow red with joy and white with fear;But he has no companion;Come ten, or come a million,Good Saadi dwells alone.Be thou ware where Saadi dwells;Wisdom of the gods is he,—Entertain it reverently.Gladly round that golden lampSylvan deities encamp,And simple maids and noble youthAre welcome to the man of truth.Most welcome they who need him most,They feed the spring which they exhaust;For greater needDraws better deed:But, critic, spare thy vanity,Nor show thy pompous parts,To vex with odious subtletyThe cheerer of men's hearts.Sad-eyed Fakirs swiftly sayEndless dirges to decay,Never in the blaze of lightLose the shudder of midnight;Pale at overflowing noonHear wolves barking at the moon;In the bower of dalliance sweetHear the far Avenger's feet:And shake before those awful Powers,Who in their pride forgive not ours.Thus the sad-eyed Fakirs preach:'Bard, when thee would Allah teach,And lift thee to his holy mount,He sends thee from his bitter fountWormwood,—saying, "Go thy ways;Drink not the Malaga of praise,But do the deed thy fellows hate,And compromise thy peaceful state;Smite the white breasts which thee fed.Stuff sharp thorns beneath the headOf them thou shouldst have comforted;For out of woe and out of crimeDraws the heart a lore sublime."'And yet it seemeth not to meThat the high gods love tragedy;For Saadi sat in the sun,And thanks was his contrition;For haircloth and for bloody whips,Had active hands and smiling lips;And yet his runes he rightly read,And to his folk his message sped.Sunshine in his heart transferredLighted each transparent word,And well could honoring Persia learnWhat Saadi wished to say;For Saadi's nightly stars did burnBrighter than Jami's day.Whispered the Muse in Saadi's cot:'O gentle Saadi, listen not,Tempted by thy praise of wit,Or by thirst and appetiteFor the talents not thine own,To sons of contradiction.Never, son of eastern morning,Follow falsehood, follow scorning.Denounce who will, who will deny,And pile the hills to scale the sky;Let theist, atheist, pantheist,Define and wrangle how they list,Fierce conserver, fierce destroyer,—But thou, joy-giver and enjoyer,Unknowing war, unknowing crime,Gentle Saadi, mind thy rhyme;Heed not what the brawlers say,Heed thou only Saadi's lay.'Let the great world bustle onWith war and trade, with camp and town;A thousand men shall dig and eat;At forge and furnace thousands sweat;And thousands sail the purple sea,And give or take the stroke of war,Or crowd the market and bazaar;Oft shall war end, and peace return,And cities rise where cities burn,Ere one man my hill shall climb,Who can turn the golden rhyme.Let them manage how they may,Heed thou only Saadi's lay.Seek the living among the dead,—Man in man is imprisonèd;Barefooted Dervish is not poor,If fate unlock his bosom's door,So that what his eye hath seenHis tongue can paint as bright, as keen;And what his tender heart hath feltWith equal fire thy heart shalt melt.For, whom the Muses smile upon,And touch with soft persuasion,His words like a storm-wind can bringTerror and beauty on their wing;In his every syllableLurketh Nature veritable;And though he speak in midnight dark,—In heaven no star, on earth no spark,—Yet before the listener's eyeSwims the world in ecstasy,The forest waves, the morning breaks,The pastures sleep, ripple the lakes,Leaves twinkle, flowers like persons be,And life pulsates in rock or tree.Saadi, so far thy words shall reach:Suns rise and set in Saadi's speech!'And thus to Saadi said the Muse:'Eat thou the bread which men refuse;Flee from the goods which from thee flee;Seek nothing,—Fortune seeketh thee.Nor mount, nor dive; all good things keepThe midway of the eternal deep.Wish not to fill the isles with eyesTo fetch thee birds of paradise:On thine orchard's edge belongAll the brags of plume and song;Wise Ali's sunbright sayings passFor proverbs in the market-place:Through mountains bored by regal art,Toil whistles as he drives his cart.Nor scour the seas, nor sift mankind,A poet or a friend to find:Behold, he watches at the door!Behold his shadow on the floor!Open innumerable doorsThe heaven where unveiled Allah poursThe flood of truth, the flood of good,The Seraph's and the Cherub's food.Those doors are men: the Pariah hindAdmits thee to the perfect Mind.Seek not beyond thy cottage wallRedeemers that can yield thee all:While thou sittest at thy doorOn the desert's yellow floor,Listening to the gray-haired crones,Foolish gossips, ancient drones,Saadi, see! they rise in statureTo the height of mighty Nature,And the secret stands revealedFraudulent Time in vain concealed,—That blessed gods in servile masksPlied for thee thy household tasks.'
From fall to spring, the russet acorn,Fruit beloved of maid and boy,Lent itself beneath the forest,To be the children's toy.Pluck it now! In vain,—thou canst not;Its root has pierced yon shady mound;Toy no longer—it has duties;It is anchored in the ground.Year by year the rose-lipped maiden,Playfellow of young and old,Was frolic sunshine, dear to all men,More dear to one than mines of gold.Whither went the lovely hoyden?Disappeared in blessed wife;Servant to a wooden cradle,Living in a baby's life.Still thou playest;—short vacationFate grants each to stand aside;Now must thou be man and artist,—'T is the turning of the tide.
By fate, not option, frugal Nature gaveOne scent to hyson and to wall-flower,One sound to pine-groves and to waterfalls,One aspect to the desert and the lake.It was her stern necessity: all thingsAre of one pattern made; bird, beast and flower,Song, picture, form, space, thought and characterDeceive us, seeming to be many things,And are but one. Beheld far off, they partAs God and devil; bring them to the mind,They dull its edge with their monotony.To know one element, explore another,And in the second reappears the first.The specious panorama of a yearBut multiplies the image of a day,—A belt of mirrors round a taper's flame;And universal Nature, through her vastAnd crowded whole, an infinite paroquet,Repeats one note.
When I was born,From all the seas of strength Fate filled a chalice,Saying, 'This be thy portion, child; this chalice,Less than a lily's, thou shalt daily drawFrom my great arteries,—nor less, nor more.'All substances the cunning chemist TimeMelts down into that liquor of my life,—Friends, foes, joys, fortunes, beauty and disgust.And whether I am angry or content,Indebted or insulted, loved or hurt,All he distils into sidereal wineAnd brims my little cup; heedless, alas!Of all he sheds how little it will hold,How much runs over on the desert sands.If a new Muse draw me with splendid ray,And I uplift myself into its heaven,The needs of the first sight absorb my blood,And all the following hours of the dayDrag a ridiculous age.To-day, when friends approach, and every hourBrings book, or starbright scroll of genius,The little cup will hold not a bead more,And all the costly liquor runs to waste;Nor gives the jealous lord one diamond dropSo to be husbanded for poorer days.Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?Why need I galleries, when a pupil's draughtAfter the master's sketch fills and o'erfillsMy apprehension? Why seek Italy,Who cannot circumnavigate the seaOf thoughts and things at home, but still adjournThe nearest matters for a thousand days?
Give me truths;For I am weary of the surfaces,And die of inanition. If I knewOnly the herbs and simples of the wood,Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain and agrimony,Blue-vetch and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras,Milkweeds and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sundew,And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woodsDraw untold juices from the common earth,Untold, unknown, and I could surely spellTheir fragrance, and their chemistry applyBy sweet affinities to human flesh,Driving the foe and stablishing the friend,—O, that were much, and I could be a partOf the round day, related to the sunAnd planted world, and full executorOf their imperfect functions.But these young scholars, who invade our hills,Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,And travelling often in the cut he makes,Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,And all their botany is Latin names.The old men studied magic in the flowers,And human fortunes in astronomy,And an omnipotence in chemistry,Preferring things to names, for these were men,Were unitarians of the united world,And, wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell,They caught the footsteps of the SAME. Our eyesAre armed, but we are strangers to the stars,And strangers to the mystic beast and bird,And strangers to the plant and to the mine.The injured elements say, 'Not in us;'And night and day, ocean and continent,Fire, plant and mineral say, 'Not in us;'And haughtily return us stare for stare.For we invade them impiously for gain;We devastate them unreligiously,And coldly ask their pottage, not their love.Therefore they shove us from them, yield to usOnly what to our griping toil is due;But the sweet affluence of love and song,The rich results of the divine consentsOf man and earth, of world beloved and lover,The nectar and ambrosia, are withheld;And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thievesAnd pirates of the universe, shut outDaily to a more thin and outward rind,Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick eyes,The stunted trees look sick, the summer short,Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay,And nothing thrives to reach its natural term;And life, shorn of its venerable length,Even at its greatest space is a defeat,And dies in anger that it was a dupe;And, in its highest noon and wantonness,Is early frugal, like a beggar's child;Even in the hot pursuit of the best aimsAnd prizes of ambition, checks its hand,Like Alpine cataracts frozen as they leaped,Chilled with a miserly comparisonOf the toy's purchase with the length of life.
Because I was content with these poor fields,Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams,And found a home in haunts which others scorned,The partial wood-gods overpaid my love,And granted me the freedom of their state,And in their secret senate have prevailedWith the dear, dangerous lords that rule our life,Made moon and planets parties to their bond,And through my rock-like, solitary wontShot million rays of thought and tenderness.For me, in showers, in sweeping showers, the SpringVisits the valley;—break away the clouds,—I bathe in the morn's soft and silvered air,And loiter willing by yon loitering stream.Sparrows far off, and nearer, April's bird,Blue-coated,—flying before from tree to tree,Courageous sing a delicate overtureTo lead the tardy concert of the year.Onward and nearer rides the sun of May;And wide around, the marriage of the plantsIs sweetly solemnized. Then flows amainThe surge of summer's beauty; dell and crag,Hollow and lake, hillside and pine arcade,Are touched with genius. Yonder ragged cliffHas thousand faces in a thousand hours.Beneath low hills, in the broad intervalThrough which at will our Indian rivuletWinds mindful still of sannup and of squaw,Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies,Here in pine houses built of new-fallen trees,Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell.Traveller, to thee, perchance, a tedious road,Or, it may be, a picture; to these men,The landscape is an armory of powers,Which, one by one, they know to draw and use.They harness beast, bird, insect, to their work;They prove the virtues of each bed of rock,And, like the chemist 'mid his loaded jars,Draw from each stratum its adapted useTo drug their crops or weapon their arts withal.They turn the frost upon their chemic heap,They set the wind to winnow pulse and grain,They thank the spring-flood for its fertile slime,And, on cheap summit-levels of the snow,Slide with the sledge to inaccessible woodsO'er meadows bottomless. So, year by year,They fight the elements with elements(That one would say, meadow and forest walked,Transmuted in these men to rule their like),And by the order in the field discloseThe order regnant in the yeoman's brain.What these strong masters wrote at large in miles,I followed in small copy in my acre;For there's no rood has not a star above it;The cordial quality of pear or plumAscends as gladly in a single treeAs in broad orchards resonant with bees;And every atom poises for itself,And for the whole. The gentle deitiesShowed me the lore of colors and of sounds,The innumerable tenements of beauty.The miracle of generative force,Far-reaching concords of astronomyFelt in the plants and in the punctual birds;Better, the linked purpose of the whole,And, chiefest prize, found I true libertyIn the glad home plain-dealing Nature gave.The polite found me impolite; the greatWould mortify me, but in vain; for stillI am a willow of the wilderness,Loving the wind that bent me. All my hurtsMy garden spade can heal. A woodland walk,A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush,A wild-rose, or rock-loving columbine,Salve my worst wounds.For thus the wood-gods murmured in my ear:'Dost love our manners? Canst thou silent lie?Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like Nature passInto the winter night's extinguished mood?Canst thou shine now, then darkle,And being latent, feel thyself no less?As, when the all-worshipped moon attracts the eye,The river, hill, stems, foliage are obscure,Yet envies none, none are unenviable.'
CONCORD, 1838
I reached the middle of the mountUp which the incarnate soul must climb,And paused for them, and looked around,With me who walked through space and time.Five rosy boys with morning lightHad leaped from one fair mother's arms,Fronted the sun with hope as bright,And greeted God with childhood's psalms.Knows he who tills this lonely fieldTo reap its scanty corn,What mystic fruit his acres yieldAt midnight and at morn?In the long sunny afternoonThe plain was full of ghosts;I wandered up, I wandered down,Beset by pensive hosts.The winding Concord gleamed below,Pouring as wide a floodAs when my brothers, long ago,Came with me to the wood.But they are gone,—the holy onesWho trod with me this lovely vale;The strong, star-bright companionsAre silent, low and pale.My good, my noble, in their prime,Who made this world the feast it wasWho learned with me the lore of time,Who loved this dwelling-place!They took this valley for their toy,They played with it in every mood;A cell for prayer, a hall for joy,—They treated Nature as they would.They colored the horizon round;Stars flamed and faded as they bade,All echoes hearkened for their sound,—They made the woodlands glad or mad.I touch this flower of silken leaf,Which once our childhood knew;Its soft leaves wound me with a griefWhose balsam never grew.Hearken to yon pine-warblerSinging aloft in the tree!Hearest thou, O traveller,What he singeth to me?Not unless God made sharp thine earWith sorrow such as mine,Out of that delicate lay could'st thouIts heavy tale divine.'Go, lonely man,' it saith;'They loved thee from their birth;Their hands were pure, and pure their faith,—There are no such hearts on earth.'Ye drew one mother's milk,One chamber held ye all;A very tender historyDid in your childhood fall.'You cannot unlock your heart,The key is gone with them;The silent organ loudest chantsThe master's requiem.'
The South-wind bringsLife, sunshine and desire,And on every mount and meadowBreathes aromatic fire;But over the dead he has no power,The lost, the lost, he cannot restore;And, looking over the hills, I mournThe darling who shall not return.I see my empty house,I see my trees repair their boughs;And he, the wondrous child,Whose silver warble wildOutvalued every pulsing soundWithin the air's cerulean round,—The hyacinthine boy, for whomMorn well might break and April bloom,The gracious boy, who did adornThe world whereinto he was born,And by his countenance repayThe favor of the loving Day,—Has disappeared from the Day's eye;Far and wide she cannot find him;My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.Returned this day, the South-wind searches,And finds young pines and budding birches;But finds not the budding man;Nature, who lost, cannot remake him;Fate let him fall, Fate can't retake him;Nature, Fate, men, him seek in vain.And whither now, my truant wise and sweet,O, whither tend thy feet?I had the right, few days ago,Thy steps to watch, thy place to know:How have I forfeited the right?Hast thou forgot me in a new delight?I hearken for thy household cheer,O eloquent child!Whose voice, an equal messenger,Conveyed thy meaning mild.What though the pains and joysWhereof it spoke were toysFitting his age and ken,Yet fairest dames and bearded men,Who heard the sweet request,So gentle, wise and grave,Bended with joy to his behestAnd let the world's affairs go by,A while to share his cordial game,Or mend his wicker wagon-frame,Still plotting how their hungry fearThat winsome voice again might hear;For his lips could well pronounceWords that were persuasions.Gentlest guardians marked sereneHis early hope, his liberal mien;Took counsel from his guiding eyesTo make this wisdom earthly wise.Ah, vainly do these eyes recallThe school-march, each day's festival,When every morn my bosom glowedTo watch the convoy on the road;The babe in willow wagon closed,With rolling eyes and face composed;With children forward and behind,Like Cupids studiously inclined;And he the chieftain paced beside,The centre of the troop allied,With sunny face of sweet repose,To guard the babe from fancied foes.The little captain innocentTook the eye with him as he went;Each village senior paused to scanAnd speak the lovely caravan.From the window I look outTo mark thy beautiful parade,Stately marching in cap and coatTo some tune by fairies played;—A music heard by thee aloneTo works as noble led thee on.Now Love and Pride, alas! in vain,Up and down their glances strain.The painted sled stands where it stood;The kennel by the corded wood;His gathered sticks to stanch the wallOf the snow-tower, when snow should fall;The ominous hole he dug in the sand,And childhood's castles built or planned;His daily haunts I well discern,—The poultry-yard, the shed, the barn,—And every inch of garden groundPaced by the blessed feet around,From the roadside to the brookWhereinto he loved to look.Step the meek fowls where erst they ranged;The wintry garden lies unchanged;The brook into the stream runs on;But the deep-eyed boy is gone.On that shaded day,Dark with more clouds than tempests are,When thou didst yield thy innocent breathIn birdlike heavings unto death,Night came, and Nature had not thee;I said, 'We are mates in misery.'The morrow dawned with needless glow;Each snowbird chirped, each fowl must crow;Each tramper started; but the feetOf the most beautiful and sweetOf human youth had left the hillAnd garden,—they were bound and still.There's not a sparrow or a wren,There's not a blade of autumn grain,Which the four seasons do not tendAnd tides of life and increase lend;And every chick of every bird,And weed and rock-moss is preferred.O ostrich-like forgetfulness!O loss of larger in the less!Was there no star that could be sent,No watcher in the firmament,No angel from the countless hostThat loiters round the crystal coast,Could stoop to heal that only child,Nature's sweet marvel undefiled,And keep the blossom of the earth,Which all her harvests were not worth?Not mine,—I never called thee mine,But Nature's heir,—if I repine,And seeing rashly torn and movedNot what I made, but what I loved,Grow early old with grief that thouMust to the wastes of Nature go,—'T is because a general hopeWas quenched, and all must doubt and grope.For flattering planets seemed to sayThis child should ills of ages stay,By wondrous tongue, and guided pen,Bring the flown Muses back to men.Perchance not he but Nature ailed,The world and not the infant failed.It was not ripe yet to sustainA genius of so fine a strain,Who gazed upon the sun and moonAs if he came unto his own,And, pregnant with his grander thought,Brought the old order into doubt.His beauty once their beauty tried;They could not feed him, and he died,And wandered backward as in scorn,To wait an aeon to be born.Ill day which made this beauty waste,Plight broken, this high face defaced!Some went and came about the dead;And some in books of solace read;Some to their friends the tidings say;Some went to write, some went to pray;One tarried here, there hurried one;But their heart abode with none.Covetous death bereaved us all,To aggrandize one funeral.The eager fate which carried theeTook the largest part of me:For this losing is true dying;This is lordly man's down-lying,This his slow but sure reclining,Star by star his world resigning.O child of paradise,Boy who made dear his father's home,In whose deep eyesMen read the welfare of the times to come,I am too much bereft.The world dishonored thou hast left.O truth's and nature's costly lie!O trusted broken prophecy!O richest fortune sourly crossed!Born for the future, to the future lost!The deep Heart answered, 'Weepest thou?Worthier cause for passion wildIf I had not taken the child.And deemest thou as those who pore,With aged eyes, short way before,—Think'st Beauty vanished from the coastOf matter, and thy darling lost?Taught he not thee—the man of eld,Whose eyes within his eyes beheldHeaven's numerous hierarchy spanThe mystic gulf from God to man?To be alone wilt thou beginWhen worlds of lovers hem thee in?To-morrow, when the masks shall fallThat dizen Nature's carnival,The pure shall see by their own will,Which overflowing Love shall fill,'T is not within the force of fateThe fate-conjoined to separate.But thou, my votary, weepest thou?I gave thee sight—where is it now?I taught thy heart beyond the reachOf ritual, bible, or of speech;Wrote in thy mind's transparent table,As far as the incommunicable;Taught thee each private sign to raiseLit by the supersolar blaze.Past utterance, and past belief,And past the blasphemy of grief,The mysteries of Nature's heart;And though no Muse can these impart,Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast,And all is clear from east to west.'I came to thee as to a friend;Dearest, to thee I did not sendTutors, but a joyful eye,Innocence that matched the sky,Lovely locks, a form of wonder,Laughter rich as woodland thunder,That thou might'st entertain apartThe richest flowering of all art:And, as the great all-loving DayThrough smallest chambers takes its way,That thou might'st break thy daily breadWith prophet, savior and head;That thou might'st cherish for thine ownThe riches of sweet Mary's Son,Boy-Rabbi, Israel's paragon.And thoughtest thou such guestWould in thy hall take up his rest?Would rushing life forget her laws,Fate's glowing revolution pause?High omens ask diviner guess;Not to be conned to tediousnessAnd know my higher gifts unbindThe zone that girds the incarnate mind.When the scanty shores are fullWith Thought's perilous, whirling pool;When frail Nature can no more,Then the Spirit strikes the hour:My servant Death, with solving rite,Pours finite into infinite.Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow,Whose streams through Nature circling go?Nail the wild star to its trackOn the half-climbed zodiac?Light is light which radiates,Blood is blood which circulates,Life is life which generates,And many-seeming life is one,—Wilt thou transfix and make it none?Its onward force too starkly pentIn figure, bone and lineament?Wilt thou, uncalled, interrogate,Talker! the unreplying Fate?Nor see the genius of the wholeAscendant in the private soul,Beckon it when to go and come,Self-announced its hour of doom?Fair the soul's recess and shrine,Magic-built to last a season;Masterpiece of love benign,Fairer that expansive reasonWhose omen 'tis, and sign.Wilt thou not ope thy heart to knowWhat rainbows teach, and sunsets show?Verdict which accumulatesFrom lengthening scroll of human fates,Voice of earth to earth returned,Prayers of saints that inly burned,—Saying,What is excellent,As God lives, is permanent;Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain;Heart's love will meet thee again.Revere the Maker; fetch thine eyeUp to his style, and manners of the sky.Not of adamant and goldBuilt he heaven stark and cold;No, but a nest of bending reeds,Flowering grass and scented weeds;Or like a traveller's fleeing tent,Or bow above the tempest bent;Built of tears and sacred flames,And virtue reaching to its aims;Built of furtherance and pursuing,Not of spent deeds, but of doing.Silent rushes the swift LordThrough ruined systems still restored,Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless,Plants with worlds the wilderness;Waters with tears of ancient sorrowApples of Eden ripe to-morrow.House and tenant go to ground,Lost in God, in Godhead found.'