University of Virginia Library

The spirit cannot die; it must dilate
Eternally, and be a vital part
Of everlasting ages—as 't was born
Amid unwinged infinity and linked
With the immensity of fate; 't is just
It should be deathless, for its glorious powers
No limit know nor border, shining through
Creation like Hyperion; but the heart
Will prey upon its energies and hang
A mountain on its wings, for subtle thought
Is but the slave of feeling, and the soul
Will languish when the bosom aches, and be
The vassal of men's usages, depressed
By poor contingencies and habitudes.
Life's feeble purposes demand the use
Of powers almost angelic, for the soul
Is like the sun, though stationed in the skies,
It must look down on earth, and light alike
Things beautiful and loathsome. Be it so!

Spirits of greatness have human form
And feature, like the veriest thing that gropes
And grovels in the mind's midnight; and they pass
Before the world as other mortal shapes,
And, though the eye may beam unusually,
The brow wear deeper lines of thought intense
Than others, and the glow and gloom of hope,
The sunlight and the darkness of the soul,
Vary the changeful feature, and the tread
Be more unequal and the outward bearing
More plainly intellectual than the step
And look of the great mass, yet deeply dwells,
Unseen, impalpable, the living beam
Of glorious light that issued from the sun
Of the Divinity; and, unbeheld
By creatures of most ordinary note,
Beings pass by in silence or they stand
Apart, by flickering fashion unbeheld,
Or by the world's worst slaves, whose spirits are
More fitting glory and would wear the robes
Of angels more to nature than the shapes
Mortality has burdened them withal.

Such Spirits fill the universe—they live
In the blue ether and their dwelling place
Is the immensity above; they sit
Upon the thrones of seraphs in the stars
And hold converse with them when night with stars
Canopies earth and holy nature folds
Her moonlight drapery round her and lies down
By bright Hyperion's side to bridal sleep.
This world of peril they in thought forget
And all its crimes and woes, and they become
Associates with the blest in pure desires
And feelings holy; and they love to tread
The verge of paradise, though mortal yet,
Seeking to know the loves that blossom there,
The joys that never fade in those bright fields,
The thoughts of bliss expanding ever through
The pauseless ages of undying love.
Such spirits find no thoughts reciprocal
In earthly beings; none can estimate
Their greatness rightly; none can feel the same
Dissolving and absorption of all powers
In soft elysian visionry; they live
Alone, starbeams round the sun-throne of God!
The sovereign eagle ever dwells alone
In solitary majesty, and waves
His mighty wings in air unbreathed by things
Of lowlier nature; and the lion walks
His monarch path untended and alone;
So the proud spirit lives in loneliness
All uncommuning, and its solitude
Becomes its empire where it reigns fore'er
In might and majesty.—But when 't is chained
In the bad world's cold prisonhouse, and mocked
By gazing folly and unholy guile,
And taunted by the reptile hordes around,
Madness springs up within the brain and glares
In deadly fury from the eye and whelms
The spirit prostrate which could be subdued
Only by its own despair! the throned mind
Is to itself a god and its high powers,
Like golden chains, are linked unto the skies.
The boundless universe with all its worlds
Of stars and suns is but a narrow path
For the immortal spirit; one bright glance
Of the soul's eye pervades all space and flies
Beyond the farthest reckoning of the sage
Who reads the heavens; the winged thought sublime
Wanders unresting through creation's worlds
And searches all their glorious beauties, till,
Yet unsatisfied, it would rove through realms
E'en angels know not, when some sudden pang,
Dark passion, want or weakness crushes thought,
And brings the mighty spirit down to earth,
And all its chilling woe and bitterness.