What visionary tints the year puts on,When failing leaves falter through motionless airOr numbly cling and shiver to be gone!How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare,As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fillsThe bowl between me and those distant hills,And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair!No more the landscape holds its wealth apart.Making me poorer in my poverty,But mingles with my senses and my heart;My own projected spirit seems to meIn her own reverie the world to steep;'Tis she that waves to sympathetic sleep,Moving, as she is moved, each field and hill, and tree.How fuse and mix, with what unfelt degrees,Clasped by the faint horizon's languid arms,Each into each, the hazy distances!The softened season all the landscape charms;Those hills, my native village that embay,In waves of dreamier purple roll away,And floating in mirage seem all the glimmering farms.Far distant sounds the hidden chickadeeClose at my side; far distant sound the leaves;The fields seem fields of dream, where MemoryWanders like gleaning Ruth; and as the sheavesOf wheat and barley wavered in the eyeOf Boaz as the maiden's glow went by,So tremble and seem remote all things the sense receives.The cock's shrill trump that tells of scattered corn,Passed breezily on by all his flapping mates,Faint and more faint, from barn to barn is borne,Southward, perhaps to far Magellan's Straits;Dimly I catch the throb of distant flails;Silently overhead the henhawk sails,With watchful, measuring eye, and for his quarry waits.The sobered robin, hunger-silent now,Leeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer;The squirrel on the shingly shagbark's bough,Now saws, now lists with downward eye and ear,Then drops his nut, and, with a chipping bound,Whisks to his winding fastness underground;The clouds like swans drift down the streaming atmosphere.O'er yon bare knoll the pointed cedar shadowsDrowse on the crisp, gray moss; the ploughman's callCreeps, faint as smoke from black, fresh-furrowed meadows;The single crow a single caw lets fallAnd all around me every bush and treeSays Autumn's here, and Winter soon willWho snows his soft, white sleep and silence over all.The birch, most shy and lady-like of trees,Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves,And hints at her foregone gentilitiesWith some saved relics of her wealth of leavesThe swamp-oak, with his royal purple on,Glares red as blood across the sinking sun,As one who proudlier to a falling fortune cleavesHe looks a sachem, in red blanket wrapt,Who, mid some council of the sad-garbed whites,Erect and stern, in his own memories lapt,With distant eye broods over other sights,Sees the hushed wood the city's flare replace,The wounded turf heal o'er the railway's trace,And roams the savage Past of his undwindled rights.The red-oak, softer-grained, yields all for lost,And, with his crumpled foliage stiff and dry,After the first betrayal of the frost,Rebuffs the kiss of the relenting sky;The chestnuts, lavish of their long-hid gold,To the faint Summer, beggared now and old,Pour back the sunshine hoarded 'neath her favoring eye.The ash her purple drops forgivinglyAnd sadly, breaking not the general hush;The maple-swamps glow like a sunset sea,Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush;All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze;Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days,Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush.O'er yon low wall, which guards one unkempt zone,Where vines, and weeds, and scrub-oaks intertwineSafe from the plough, whose rough, discordant stoneIs massed to one soft gray by lichens fine,The tangled blackberry, crossed and recrossed, weavesA prickly network of ensanguined leaves;Hard by, with coral beads, the prim black-alders shine.Pillaring with flame this crumbling boundary,Whose loose blocks topple 'neath the ploughboy's foot,Who, with each sense shut fast except the eye,Creeps close and scares the jay he hoped to shoot,The woodbine up the elm's straight stem aspires.Coiling it, harmless, with autumnal fires;In the ivy's paler blaze the martyr oak stands mute.Below, the Charles—a stripe of nether sky,Now hid by rounded apple-trees between,Whose gaps the misplaced sail sweeps bellying by,Now flickering golden through a woodland screen,Then spreading out at his next turn beyond,A silver circle like an inland pond—Slips seaward silently through marshes purple and green.Dear marshes! vain to him the gift of sightWho cannot in their various incomes share,From every season drawn, of shade and light,Who sees in them but levels brown and bare;Each change of storm or sunshine scatters freeOn them its largesse of variety,For nature with cheap means still works her wonders rare.In Spring they lie one broad expanse of green,O'er which the light winds run with glimmering feet;Here, yellower stripes track out the creek unseenhere, darker growths o'er hidden ditches meet;And purpler stains show where the blossoms crowd,As if the silent shadow of a cloudHung there becalmed, with the next breath to fleet.All round, upon the river's slippery edge,Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide,Whispers and leans the breeze-entangling sedge;Through emerald glooms the lingering waters slide,Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the sun,And the stiff banks in eddies melt and runOf dimpling light, and with the current seem to glide.In Summer 'tis a blithesome sight to see,As step by step, with measured swing, they pass,The wide-ranked mowers evading to the knee,Their sharp scythes panting through the thick-set grassThen, stretched beneath a rick's shade in a ring,Their nooning take, while one begins to singA stave that droops and dies 'neath the close sky of brass.Meanwhile the devil-may-care, the bobolink,Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stopsJust ere he sweeps O'er rapture's tremulous brink,And 'twixt the winrows most demurely drops,A decorous bird of business, who providesFor his brown mate and fledglings six besides,And looks from right to left, a farmer mid his crops.Another change subdues them in the Fall,But saddens not, they still show merrier tints,Though sober russet seems to cover all;When the first sunshine through their dew-drops glints,Look how the yellow clearness, streamed across,Redeems with rarer hues the season's loss,As Dawn's feet there had touched and left their rosy prints.Or come when sunset gives its freshened zest,Lean o'er the bridge and let the ruddy thrill,While the shorn sun swells down the hazy west,Glow opposite; the marshes drink their fillAnd swoon with purple veins, then slowly fadeThrough pink to brown, as eastward moves the shade,Lengthening with stealthy creep, of Simond's darkening hill.Later, and yet ere Winter wholly shuts,Ere through the first dry snow the runner grates,And the loath cart-wheel screams in slippery ruts,While the firmer ice the eager boy awaits,Trying each buckle and strap beside the fire,And until bedtime—plays with his desire,Twenty times putting on and off his new-bought skates;—Then, every morn, the river's banks shine brightWith smooth plate-armor, treacherous and frail,By the frost's clinking hammers forged at night,"Gainst which the lances of the sun prevail,Giving a pretty emblem of the dayWhen guitar arms in light shall melt away,And states shall move free limbed, loosed from war's crampingmail.And now those waterfalls the ebbing riverTwice everyday creates on either sideTinkle, as through their fresh-sparred grots they shiverIn grass-arched channels to the sun denied;High flaps in sparkling blue the far-heard crow,The silvered flats gleam frostily below,Suddenly drops the gull and breaks the glassy tide.But, crowned in turn by vying seasons three,Their winter halo hath a fuller ring;This glory seems to rest immovably,—The others were too fleet and vanishing;When the hid tide is at its highest flow,O'er marsh and stream one breathless trance of snowWith brooding fulness awes and hushes everything.The sunshine seems blown off by the bleak wind,As pale as formal candles lit by day;Gropes to the sea the river dumb and blind;The brown ricks, snow-thatched by the storm in play,Show pearly breakers combing o'er their lee,White crests as of some just enchanted sea,Checked in their maddest leap and hanging poised midway.But when the eastern blow, with rain aslant,From mid-sea's prairies green and rolling plainsDrives in his wallowing herds of billows gaunt,And the roused Charles remembers in his veinsOld Ocean's blood and snaps his gyves of frost,That tyrannous silence on the shores is tostIn dreary wreck, and crumbling desolation reigns.Edgewise or flat, in Druid-like device,With leaden pools between or gullies bare,The blocks lie strewn, a bleak Stonehenge of ice;No life, no sound, to break the grim despair,Save sullen plunge, as through the sedges stiffDown crackles riverward some thaw-sapped cliff,Or ashen the close-wedged fields of ice crunch here and there.But let me turn from fancy-pictured scenesTo that whose pastoral calm before me lies:Here nothing harsh or rugged intervenes;The early evening with her misty dyesSmooths off the ravelled edges of the nigh,Relieves the distant with her cooler sky,And tones the landscape down, and soothes the wearied eyesThere gleams my native village, dear to me,Though higher change's waves each day are seen,Whelming fields famed in boyhood's history,Sanding with houses the diminished green;There, in red brick, which softening time defies,Stand square and stiff the Muses' factories;How with my life knit up is every well-known scene!Flow on, dear river! not alone you flowTo outward sight, and through your marshes wind;Fed from the mystic springs of long-ago,Your twin flows silent through my world of mindGrow dim, dear marshes, in the evening's gray!Before my inner sight ye stretch away,And will forever, though these fleshly eyes grow blind.
I. Emerson.
"There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one,Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on,Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord knows,Is some of it pr—— No, 'tis not even prose;I'm speaking of metres; some poems have welledFrom those rare depths of soul that have ne'er been excelled;They're not epics, but that doesn't matter a pin,In creating, the only hard thing's to begin;A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak,If you've once found the way you've achieved the grand stroke;In the worst of his poems are mines of rich matter,But thrown in a heap with a crash and a clatterNow it is not one thing nor another aloneMakes a poem, but rather the general tone,The something pervading, uniting, the whole,The before unconceived, unconceivable soul,So that just in removing this trifle or that, youTake away, as it were, a chief limb of the statue;Roots, wood, bark, and leaves, singly perfect may be,But, clapt bodge-podge together, they don't make a tree."But, to come back to Emerson, (whom by the way,I believe we left waiting,)—his is, we may say,A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose rangeHas Olympus for one pole, for t' other the Exchange;Life, nature, lore, God, and affairs of that sort,He looks at as merely ideas; in short,As if they were fossils stuck round in a cabinet,Of such vast extent that our earth's a mere dab in it;Composed just as he is inclined to conjecture her,Namely, one part pure earth, ninety-nine parts pure lecturer;You are filled with delight at his clear demonstration,Each figure, word, gesture, just fits the occasion,With the quiet precision of science he'll sort em,But you can't help suspecting the whole a post mortem.
II. Bryant.
"There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified,As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified,Save when by reflection 'tis kindled o' nights,With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Nights.He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation,(There's no doubt that he stands in supreme iceolation,)Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on,But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on—He's too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on:Unqualified merits, I'll grant, if you choose, he has em,But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm;If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul,Like being stirred up with the very North Pole."He is very nice reading in summer, but interNos, we don't want extra freezing in winter;Take him up in the depth of July, my advice is,When you feel an Egyptian devotion to ices.But, deduct all you can, there's enough that's right good inhim,He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him;And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is,Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities,To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet?No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their lime stone andgranite.
III. Whinier.
"There is Whinier, whose swelling and vehement heartStrains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart,And reveals the live Man, still supreme and erect,Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect;There was ne'er a man born who had more of the swingOf the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing;And his failures arise, (though perhaps he don't know it,)From the very same cause that has made him a poet,—A fervor of mind which knows no separation'Twixt simple excitement and pure inspiration,As my Pythoness erst sometimes erred from not knowingIf 'twere I or mere wind through her tripod was blowing;Let his mind once get head in its favorite directionAnd the torrent of verse bursts the dams of reflection,While, borne with the rush of the metre along,The poet may chance to go right or go wrong,Content with the whirl and delirium of song;Then his grammar's not always correct, nor his rhymes,And he's prone to repeat his own lyrics sometimes,Not his best, though, for those are struck off at white-heatsWhen the heart in his breast like a trip-hammer beatsAnd can ne'er be repeated again any moreThan they could have been carefully plotted before"All honor and praise to the right-hearted bardWho was true to The Voice when such service was hard,Who himself was so free he dared sing for the slaveWhen to look but a protest in silence was brave;
IV. Hawthorne.
'There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rareThat you hardly at first see the strength that is there;A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet,So earnest, so graceful, so solid, so fleet,Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet;'Tis as if a rough oak that for ages had stood,With his gnarled bony branches like ribs of the woodShould bloom, after cycles of struggle and scathe,With a single anemone trembly and rathe;His strength is so tender; his wildness so meek,That a suitable parallel sets one to seek—He's a John Bunyan Fouque, a Puritan Tieck;When nature was shaping him, clay was not grantedFor making so full-sized a man as she wanted,So, to fill out her model, a little she sparedFrom some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared.And she could not have hit a more excellent planFor making him fully and perfectly man.The success of her scheme gave her so much delight,That she tried it again, shortly after, in Dwight,Only, while she was kneading and shaping the clay,She sang to her work in her sweet childish way,And found, when she'd put the last touch to his soul,That the music had somehow got mixed with the whole.
V. Cooper.
"Here's Cooper, who's written six volumes to showHe's as good as a lord: well, let's grant that he's so;If a person prefer that description of praise,Why, a coronet's certainly cheaper than bays;But he need take no pains to convince us he's not(As his enemies say) the American Scott.Choose any twelve men, and let C. read aloudThat one of his novels of which he's most proud,And I'd lay any bet that, without ever quittingTheir box, they'd be all, to a man, for acquitting.He has drawn you he's character, though, that is new,One wildflower he's plucked that is wet with the dewOf this fresh Western world, and, the thing not to mince,He has done naught but copy it ill ever since;His Indians, with proper respect be it said,Are just Natty Bumpo daubed over with red,And his very Long Toms are the same useful Nat,Rigged up in duck pants and a sou'-wester hat,(Though once in a Coffin, a good chance was foundTo have slipt the old fellow away underground.)All his other men-figures are clothes upon sticksThe derniere chemise of a man in a fix,(As a captain besieged, when his garrison's small,bets up caps upon poles to be seen o'er the wall;)And the women he draws from one model don't vary,All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie.When a character's wanted, he goes to the taskAs a cooper would do in composing a cask;He picks out the staves, of their qualities heedful,Just hoops them together as tight as is needful,And, if the best fortune should crown the attempt, heHas made at the most something wooden and empty."Don't suppose I would underrate Cooper's abilitiesIf I thought you'd do that, I should feel very ill at ease;The men who have given to one character lifeAnd objective existence, are not very rife,You may number them all, both prose-writers and singers,Without overrunning the bounds of your fingers,And Natty won't go to oblivion quickerThan Adams the parson or Primrose the vicar."There is one thing in Cooper I like, too, and that isThat on manners he lectures his countrymen gratis,Not precisely so either, because, for a rarity,He is paid for his tickets in unpopularity.Now he may overcharge his American pictures,But you'll grant there's a good deal of truth in hisstrictures;And I honor the man who is willing to sinkHalf his present repute for the freedom to think,And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak,Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store,Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower.
VI. Poe and Longfellow.
"There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge,Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters,In a way to make people of common-sense damn metres,Who has written some things quite the best of their kind,But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind,Who—but hey-day! What's this? Messieurs Mathews and Poe,You mustn't fling mud-balls at Longfellow so,Does it make a man worse that his character's suchAs to make his friends love him (as you thin) too much?Why, there is not a bard at this moment aliveMore willing than he that his fellows should thrive,While you are abusing him thus, even nowHe would help either one of you out of a dough;You may say that he's smooth and all that till you're hoarseBut remember that elegance also is force;After polishing granite as much as you will,The heart keeps its tough old persistency still;Deduct all you can that still keeps you at bay,Why, he'll live till men weary of Collins and Gray.'Tis truth that I speakHad Theocritus written in English, not Greek,I believe that his exquisite sense would scarce change a lineIn that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral Evangeline.That's not ancient nor modern, its place is apartWhere time has no sway, in the realm of pure Art,'Tis a shrine of retreat from Earth's hubbub and strifeAs quiet and chaste as the author's own life.
VII. Irving.
"What! Irving? thrice welcome, warm heart and fine brain,You bring back the happiest spirit from Spain,And the gravest sweet humor, that ever were thereSince Cervantes met death in his gentle despair;Nay, don't be embarrassed, nor look so beseeching,—I shan't run directly against my own preaching,And, having just laughed at their Raphaels and Dantes,Go to setting you up beside matchless Cervantes;But allow me to speak what I honestly feel,—To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele,Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill,With the whole of that partnership's stock and good will,Mix well, and while stirring, hum o'er, as a spell,The fine old English Gentleman, simmer it well,Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strainThat only the finest and clearest remain,Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receivesFrom the warm lazy sun loitering down through green leaves,And you'll find a choice nature, not wholly deservingA name either English or Yankee,—just Irving.
VIII. Holmes.
"There's Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit;A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from which flitThe electrical tingles of hit after hit;In long poems 'tis painful sometimes, and invitesA thought of the way the new Telegraph writes,Which pricks down its little sharp sentences spitefullyAs if you got more than you'd title to rightfully,And you find yourself hoping its wild father LightningWould flame in for a second and give you fright'ning.He has perfect sway of what I call a sham metre,But many admire it, the English pentameter,And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly worse,With less nerve, swing, and fire in the same kind of verse,Nor e'er achieved aught in 't so worthy of praiseAs the tribute of Holmes to the grand Marseillaise.You went crazy last year over Bulwer's New Timon;Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should rhyme on,Heaping verses on verses and tames upon tomes,He could ne'er reach the best point and vigor of Holmes.His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyricFull of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satyricIn a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toesThat are trodden upon are your own or your foes'.
IX. Lowell.
"There is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climbWith a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme,He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders,But he can't with that bundle he has on his shouldersThe top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reachingTill he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching;His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well,But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shellAnd rattle away till he's old as Methusalem,At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem.
X. Spirit of Ancient Poetry.
"My friends, in the happier days of the muse,We were luckily free from such things as reviews,Then naught came between with its fog to make clearerThe heart of the poet to that of his hearer;Then the poet brought heaven to the people, and theyFelt that they, too, were poets in hearing his lay;Then the poet was prophet, the past in his soulPre-created the future, both parts of one whole;Then for him there was nothing too great or too small.For one natural deity sanctified all;Then the bard owned no clipper and meter of moodsSave the spirit of silence that hovers and broodsO'er the seas and the mountains, the rivers and woodsHe asked not earth's verdict, forgetting the clods,His soul soared and sang to an audience of gods.'Twas for them that he measured the thought and the line,And shaped for their vision the perfect design,With as glorious a foresight, a balance as true,As swung out the worlds in the infinite blue;Then a glory and greatness invested man's heartThe universal, which now stands estranged and apart,In the free individual moulded, was Art;Then the forms of the Artist seemed thrilled with desireFor something as yet unattained, fuller, higher,As once with her lips, lifted hands, and eyes listening,And her whole upward soul in her countenance glistening,Eurydice stood—like a beacon unfired,Which, once touched with flame, will leap heav'nward inspired—And waited with answering kindle to markThe first gleam of Orpheus that pained the red Dark.Then painting, song, sculpture, did more than relievethe need that men feel to create and believe,And as, in all beauty, who listens with loveHears these words oft repeated—'beyond and above.'So these seemed to be but the visible signOf the grasp of the soul after things more divine;They were ladders the Artist erected to climbO'er the narrow horizon of space and of time,And we see there the footsteps by which men had gainedTo the one rapturous glimpse of the never-attained,As shepherds could erst sometimes trace in the sodThe last spurning print of a sky-cleaving god.
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!Long has it waved on high,And many an eye has danced to seeThat banner in the sky;Beneath it rung the battle shout,And burst the cannon's roar;—The meteor of the ocean airShall sweep the clouds no more!Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,Where knelt the vanquished foe,When winds were hurrying o'er the floodsAnd waves were white below,No more shall feel the victor's tread,Or know the conquered knee;—The harpies of the shore shall pluckThe eagle of the sea!O better that her shattered hulkShould sink beneath the wave;Her thunders shook the mighty deep,And there should be her grave;Nail to the mast her holy flag,Set every threadbare sail,And give her to the god of storms,The lightning and the gale!
I saw him once before,As he passed by the door,And againThe pavement stones resound,As he totters o'er the groundWith his cane.They say that in his prime,Ere the pruning-knife of TimeCut him down,Not a better man was found,By the Crier on his roundThrough the town.But now he walks the streets,And he looks at all he meetsSad and wan,And he shakes his feeble head,That it seems as if he said,"They are gone."The mossy marbles restOn the lips that he has prestIn their bloom,And the names he loved to hearHave been carved for many a yearOn the tomb.My grandmamma has said—Poor old lady, she is deadLong ago—That he had a Roman nose,And his cheek was like a roseIn the snow.But now his nose is thin,And it rests upon his chinLike a staff,And a crock is in his back,And a melancholy crackIn his laugh.I know it is a sinFor me to sit and grinAt him here;But the old three-cornered hat,And the breeches, and all that,Are so queer!And if I should live to beThe last leaf upon the treeIn the spring,Let them smile, as I do now,At the old forsaken boughWhere I cling.
My aunt! my dear unmarried aunt!Long years have o'er her flown;Yet still she strains the aching claspThat binds her virgin zone;I know it hurts her,—though she looksAs cheerful as she can;Her waist is ampler than her life,For life is but a span.My aunt! my poor deluded aunt!Her hair is almost gray;Why will she train that winter curlIn such a spring-like way?How can she lay her glasses down,And say she reads as well,When through a double convex lens,She just makes out to spell?Her father—grandpapa! forgiveThis erring lip its smiles—Vowed she should make the finest girlWithin a hundred miles;He sent her to a stylish school;'Twas in her thirteenth June;And with her, as the rules required,"Two towels and a spoon."They braced my aunt against a board,To make her straight and tall;They laced her up, they starved her down,To make her light and small;They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,They screwed it up with pins;—O never mortal suffered moreIn penance for her sins.So, when my precious aunt was done,My grandsire brought her back;(By daylight, lest some rabid youthMight follow on the track;)"Ah!" said my grandsire, as he shookSome powder in his pan,"What could this lovely creature doAgainst a desperate man!"Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche,Nor bandit cavalcade,Tore from the trembling father's armsHis all-accomplished maid.For her how happy had it been!And Heaven had spared to meTo see one sad, ungathered roseOn my ancestral tree.
This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,Sails the unshadowed main,—The venturous bark that flingsOn the sweet summer wind its purpled wingsIn gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,And coral reefs lie bare,Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;Wrecked is the ship of pearl!And every chambered cell,Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,Before thee lies revealed,—Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!Year after year beheld the silent toilThat spread his lustrous coil;Mill, as the spiral grew,He left the past year's dwelling for the new,Stole with soft step its shining archway through,Built up its idle door,Stretched m his last-found home, and knew the old no more.Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,Child of the wandering sea,Cast from her lap, forlorn!From thy dead lips a clearer note is bornThan ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!While on mine ear it rings,Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:—Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,As the swift seasons roll!Leave thy low-vaulted past!Let each new temple, nobler than the last,Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,Till thou at length art free,Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!