Collected Poems: With Autobiographical and Critical Fragments By Frederic W. H. Myers: Edited by his Wife Eveleen Myers |
Collected Poems: With Autobiographical and Critical Fragments | ||
350
[“Soul, that in some high world hast made]
I
“Soul, that in some high world hast madePre-natal unbewailing choice,
Thro' Earth's perplexities of shade
Sternly to suffer and rejoice;—
Breathe in me too thine ardent aim;
Let me too seek thy soaring goal:—
However severed, still the same
My hope with thine, O kindred Soul!
II
“Yet pause. The roaring North has drivenBeyond our ken his foamy car;
Serener than the height of heaven
This summer sea lies near and far;
And flecked with flying shade and shine
Heaves a dove-green, dove-purple breast,
And shimmers to the soft sky-line
Thro' faery solitudes of rest.
III
“No fruit has Ocean's tumult found;His wave-battalions blindly ran;—
Hushed after all that storm and sound
Old Ocean ends as he began:—
351
Oh, not for naught thy skies were wild!
Thine Angel marked them, measuring well
The storms that should not slay his child.
IV
“Thine eager youth they could not dim;They left thee slender, left thee fair;
Left the soft life of voice and limb,
The blue, the gold, of eyes, of hair.
Within a sterner change they wrought,—
Beset thy Will with surging wrong,
Smote on the citadels of Thought,
And found thee ready, left thee strong.
V
“Thy worst is over. Pause and hark!Thine inmost Angel whispers clear,
‘We leave the blackness and the dark;
The end is Love, the end is near.’
Lift then anew the lessening weight;
Fight on, to men and angels dear!
Fare forth, brave soul, from fate to fate;—
Yet ah—one moment linger here!”
Collected Poems: With Autobiographical and Critical Fragments | ||