University of Virginia Library

“Life! Life! oh give me life, thou parent Sun!
That pourest it in floods in every ray
From thy divine supernal countenance,
That I may be coeval with thyself
And look at Knowledge as I would at thee,
Undazzled, unconsumed, insatiable!
Life! Life! oh give me life, Eternal Sea!
That borest Aphrodite in thy womb,
Immortal as thyself! Oh give me Life
That I may sail upon the waves of Time
To havens of Eternity! Thou Earth!
Dear Mother Earth! be kindly to thy son,
And teach me, guide me, aid me, how to pluck
The seeds of Knowledge scattered o'er thy breast,
In weed and grass, and flower, and rind, and fruit,
In every thing that grows! I pine to learn
By patient study of the morns and noons,
By deep seclusion of the eves and nights,
By constant intercourse with thee and thine,
The mysteries of life! O trembling stars
That in the frostful winter nights infuse
Visions of beauty to the yearning soul!
Let me, with reverent eyes and bended knee,
Enter the outer porch, and catch a gleam
Of your occult, unspoken secrecies!
Life throbs eternally through all your spheres,
And one pulsation of the immensity,
One tidal flow of the incessant wave
Of such deep Ocean, would extend my span
From seventy to seven times seventy years,
And seven times those! O dread profundity
Of knowledge that mine earnest eyes would pierce—
That my immortal soul imprisoned here
Would measure in the flesh! is there no hope
That I can drop my plummet to your depths?
That I can shoot my arrow to your heights?
That I can swathe and circumscribe and bound
The wisdom that you hide? Extend my days,
My strength, my life, my soul, or let me die
One of the human, common herd and crowd,
As careless and as valueless as they!”

Thus Chiron's plaint resounded on the shore,
Chiron the Centaur—Chiron, King of men—
Chiron, no monstrous birth, half man, half steed,
But godlike and Titanic—first that tamed
The wild unbridled horse, and rode his back
Firm fixed as Fate, or strong unchangeable Will—
Misnamed the Centaur by the foolish folk
Of dull Boeotia:—thus his mournful words
Commingled with the anthems of the winds,
Quivering amid the hoarse responsive boughs
Of perishing oaks, a thousand summers old;—
Thus rose it 'mid the psalm of waterfalls,
With fitful music, sadder than their own,
And still the cry was “Life! oh give me Life!
If trees may live for countless centuries,
Why shall not I? If Ocean's voice to-day
Sounds as it sounded at the birth of Time,
Why shall my voice be hushed, mine utterance quenched
To-morrow in the tomb?”

His prayer was heard:
The sunshine and the sun-impregnate Air
Shed life into his pores and arteries;
The Sea gave healing for the wounds of Time;
The Earth distilled its balsams for all ill
That flesh can suffer from the darts of Death,
And every tree, and herb, and bulb, and flower
Bared to his earnest eyes its inmost heart,
And said, “O Man of transitory years,
Rejuvenescence, Health and Beauty, dwell
In every outburst of the teeming spring—
In every flower that God permits to grow,
In every tender leaflet of the field;
In every dew-drop on the rose's cup—
And all are thine.”

He saw—he plucked!
He drank and ate, and felt in all his limbs
Immortal Strength and Youth! Time passed him by
And left no wrinkle on his check or brow,
No dimness in his eye, and in his step
No faltering such as curbs the sons of men,
And teaches them how humble they should be
In presence of the swift approaching doom
That blows them from the Earth, like leaf from branch.
The world was his, and all its privilege
To love, to do, to suffer, and to know;
And loving, doing, knowing, suffering much,
To rise to godlike heights, and be of gods
Equal and peer.

Alas! alas for him!
He had not bargained for his youth of heart;
And that grew old. He had not thought to crave
For sweet renewal of his sympathies,
For lighting of Imagination's fire,
For flowering of Affection, ever fresh
As Earth's young daisies when the Springtime leaps
Jocund from Southern skies to Northern meads!
Alas for him, that would be overwise!
He had the body of Youth, but not the soul;
And all his knowledge, plucked from Heaven's own gate,
Served but to show him how his utmost range
Was but the long-day crawling of a snail
Over the lowest step of countless steps,
That lead to the Eternal vestibule
Of God's great Temple—dreamed of by the sage
In fitful visions of disordered sleep,
But never seen by dwellers on the Earth.

“O fool!”;he said; “O worse than mortal fool!
To drag the chain of flesh, and link thyself
To such incumbrance and imprisonment,
When at the end of short appointed Time
I might have known the freedom of the spheres,
And been the real god whose part I play
With piteous masquerade; and humbly sat
At God's own footstool; knowing what I knew
By God's permission and God's recompense!

“Father Supreme! I supplicate for Death!
Death is Thy law;—no evil to the just,
No sorrow to the wise. I never prayed
So ardently and clamorously for Life
As now I pray for Death! Oh, let me die,
And sink into the quiet common grave
With mine earth-vesture—as the rain-drop sinks
Into the grateful bosom of the field.
My soul shall live again the life ordained
In the Soul's Universe; not prisoned here—
A wing-clipped eagle—a dark-grubbing mole—
A limpet on the rock—a barren stone
Weltering unheeded on the shore of Time.”

Long, long he suffered ere his prayer was heard:
Great was his crime, great was his punishment.