Benoni :: :: University of Virginia Library

With lives too full of wants and work
To spare one silent nook for thought,
With lips too rude, and souls too murk,
To breed clear fancies, e'en if sought,—

These yet within their spirits keep,
At times, some huge delights and dim
Of feeling or of thought, that sweep
Serenely over them, and brim

Their minds with sweet but formless haze—
Then vanish undistill'd away:
A melting sunset cloud—a maze
Of dizzy tints among the grey—

A vagrant dreaminess, that plays
With the dumb soul beneath its sway,
Then slips behind unseen, nor stays
To make a record for the day:

'Tis these for whom the Poet writes—
Not for himself alone he builds
His vocal bower of calm delights;
Not for himself alone he gilds

His changeful sea of outer life
With answering colours from within:
These too he champions in the strife—
The holy strife—with wrongs and sin;

For these he culls with faultless ear
The wild yet meaning harmonies
Of things, which all who list may hear,—
Born of the earth, and sea, and skies,—

And sets them in deep luscious chords,
So full, so simple, and so true,
So deftly sounded forth in words,
That who had heard, now know them too:

For these his leader-spirit thinks
The thoughts they felt but could not frame;
His eye burns clear o'er orient brinks
With light from some unrisen flame:

And all emotions undescribed,
And indistinct and spectral things
That graze our meaner minds, unbribed
To shed the fragrance from their wings,

All these he gathers in his wreath,
And gives them shape and gives them hue
So well, that some broad name beneath
Each kens the several phase he knew:

And while his ripening lips distil
New truths, new fancies, evermore,
Our listening hearts in wonder still
Seem full of sounds they knew before;

Till some remember'd note of bliss
Shoots thro' us with a special stir—
“'Tis ours,” we cry, “to feel, but his
To be the heart's interpreter!”

Such is the Poet's work: and now,
What hath the God of Wisdom given
Of speech and thought, for earth to know,
So like the speech and thought of heaven?

How rich with hope and calm to thee,
In all thy changeful moods, must come
Thine own pure spirit's songs, when we,
The stranger-bosoms, call them Home!

How dear to find, where'er thou art,
Cool sacred Edens for thy feet!
How rare the music at thy heart,
Which, e'en at distance, is so sweet!

Then speak to us thro' days and nights
The muffled things we only feel;
Move with thy clarion on the heights,
And all their tuneful spells reveal.

And Thou, who gavest the music, give
The docile grace of heart to hear:
That scents in every sigh may live,
And glints of light on every tear:

And let the still prophetic flow
From torrent-whirls our souls reclaim,
And teach us wisdom, till we grow
All of a Poet but the name.