The Poetical Works of Sydney Dobell With Introductory Notice and Memoir by John Nichol |
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 | The Poetical Works of Sydney Dobell |  |
Marvel not, gentle friends,
Sprung out of yesterday, poor hearts, and growing
Like creeping plants, even to the size and fashion
Of what ye lean on—marvel not that we
Who worship Freedom with one soul, adore her
In different deity. As I have told you,
Dark fanes and reverend trophies, stones that might
Be portals to the world; the fossil limbs
By which we build the giants of old time;
Grey wonders stranger for decay; strange fragments
Of forms once held divine, and still, like angels,
Immortal everywhere; lone hermit columns,
Whereto the ideal hath no space to add
The pile they bore; stern pediments that look'd
On altars where antipodes burnt incense,
And the three arms of the great globe piled up
Their several tribute; all the sacred shades
Which the great Past receding from the world
Casts out of heaven on earth;—these and like these,
The high, the deep, the eternal, the unbounded,
Were sponsors to my soul: and if my thought,
Where your more nice and neoteric fancy
Labours with townships, deals out continents,
Think it no marvel. Listen.
Sprung out of yesterday, poor hearts, and growing
Like creeping plants, even to the size and fashion
Of what ye lean on—marvel not that we
Who worship Freedom with one soul, adore her
In different deity. As I have told you,
Dark fanes and reverend trophies, stones that might
Be portals to the world; the fossil limbs
By which we build the giants of old time;
Grey wonders stranger for decay; strange fragments
Of forms once held divine, and still, like angels,
Immortal everywhere; lone hermit columns,
Whereto the ideal hath no space to add
The pile they bore; stern pediments that look'd
On altars where antipodes burnt incense,
And the three arms of the great globe piled up
Their several tribute; all the sacred shades
Which the great Past receding from the world
Casts out of heaven on earth;—these and like these,
The high, the deep, the eternal, the unbounded,
Were sponsors to my soul: and if my thought,
Where your more nice and neoteric fancy
Labours with townships, deals out continents,
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| The Poetical Works of Sydney Dobell | |