University of Virginia Library

I marvel not that, in the ignorant time,
Men gave each element its god, and crouch'd
In spirit as in frame, when through their woods
Fire like a demon ran; or when the wind
Beat on their sheltering bields, and with the rain
Grappled to death; or when the thunder spoke
In answer to the sign the lightning made,
Causing great discontent among the hills.—
This black and fiery warfare rushing through
The accustom'd quiet of their blue ceil'd earth—
What wonder they deem'd spirits were abroad!
Was not wild motion life? big noises speech?
To them they were; and deeplier to us
So should they be—all motion, and all sound.
For Soul is there, though too familiar thought,
Incrusted with the daily use of names,
Becomes dead thought and misses it. And things—
Not only the imperious elements,
But common work-world and domestic things—
Have all their own peculiar and quaint tongues,
By which, unseen, we know them. Is it soul
In them that speaks to soul in us? or what?
“A silly question,” sayest thou? But think!
The sound of things inanimate is speech—
Of sentient origin. Whatelse is sound?
Thou can'st not tell though thou exhaust all speech.
And motion, thou may'st call it force—dead force:
But, whether 'tis the swoop of giant storms,
Or fairy dimple on a dreaming lake,
Still say I, it is life. Else, how receive
In our life-veins the pulses from without
That make us one with Nature? Day and night,
That ever through us come in throbs of beauty;
Sunshine, and shadow, and the breezy grass;
The woods that nod in slumber, or awake
To throw their tresses loose upon the wind;
The raking clouds that drive athwart the moon;
The wandering sea that never finds a home:
The lake that never leaves one; and the rivers
That come from rural poverty, like youth,
To push their lives in cities and grow rich—
Yea, very rich, but troubled, in their deeps:—
Why speak these to our life, if they have none?—
That river's soul runs through me! I could be,
With little change, its worshipper, O God!
But that it flows from Thee, and Thou hast all.

I should live in a world of active duty—
My wants demand it. But my heart repines,
And leaves me to a world of idle thought,
Or that of outer Nature—the mere change
Of day and night and season, sun and moon:
Or vagrant fancy, or the fool's desire
For other place than this which is his own.—
A patch of blue in heaven, a pacing cloud,
A sun-gleam, or the carol of a bird,
Makes beggars of my duties, and they plead
In vain—although with God's own voice they speak.

To-day there is a tumult in the air,
A roaring as of furies in the bay,
A rumbling as of heavy toothèd wheels
Up there within the chimney; window panes
Batter'd and dim with gusty blads of rain;
The very wind seems roll'd in sheets of rain,
The houses dash'd, the steeples drench'd, the streets
Pelted and plash'd, and fill'd with runnels brown.
But, loud o'er all, the tumult in the air,
The roaring as of furies in the bay!

There had been eerie whistlings over night,
And wailings on the house-tops, which ran through
Our weird unblessèd dreams. Ere we awoke,
The storm had also come into our dreams;
So that my spirit out of sleep was borne,
E'en on the storm's wing; and, for very joy
In this rough day, it cannot light again
Among the working homes. Yea, I have come
To find it here upon this bellowing strand,
And sent my duties to fill up the debt
That runs to mortal ruin. Let them go—
I do not like them; they oppress my soul:
It has not room to breathe in them. Behold!
On this wave-welter'd shore, in wind and rain,
How freely beats the heart! how near it feels
To that in Nature beating! For I stand
Within the pressure of great agencies
That come by It impell'd. The broken heavens
Drag almost to the sea, and landward rush,
With terror stricken, like a routed host.
The waves, white crested, and with yells of war,
Pursue them:—one last dash at flying heaven!—
They only plunge and tumble on the shore,
Crest-fallen and disappointed.

But the roar
Comes most from yonder heads that bluffly stand
Knee-deep i' the sea, and sentinel the bay.
The rout comes round them, swept on wind and wave;
And hark! the storm's wild throat—too high for bass—
Has crack'd its voice upon them, and 'tis shrill,
Air-rending, as a trumpet. Not a sail,
Or any human shadow, moves within
That circuit of dim air and weltering sea;
But out beyond the curtain of thick drift,
How many well-reef'd barks and stout-braced hearts
Now stand at bay i' the storm! A lonely bird
That seems far blown and driven from the deep,
Hoary and sea-like, glides around my head,
And gazes into me with strange pale eyes—
Most melancholy eyes! Be still my heart!
And yet those eyes, how painfully near they come!
And those long spectral wings!—Why did I wince?
It put me in a circle, in a spell,
And shut all else from eye and ear. But see!
The lonely bird beats windward out of sight;
It's spell breaks, and again the welt'ring sea,
The trumpet-sounding cliffs, the wind and rain
Leap through these senses into me.—

O God!
We know not by what miracle the soul
Receives into itself the outer world:
But in such gleams of beauty does it come,
Methinks it is its spirit we receive—
In very deed 'tis Thee! God, give me work
In which my fitness and Thy glory meet,
As in this vagrancy they seem to do;
Or as we see in the commission'd men;
And it shall have my knee, my hand, my heart,
My toiling days,—ay, and my sleepless nights;
Which neither toil nor weariness could feel,
With me the chosen one to do their work,
And Thou in all their hours. O grant me this!

The tempest has God's voice to day: I feel
My words are driven back into my throat;
The tide keeps frowning on me to go back,
And foot by foot it claims the beach; the wind
Takes the salt spray and blows it in my eyes:
My very thoughts are beaten back: the day
Seems all a driving back. O God of day!
Thou hear'st the faintest breathing of a soul
Rising through all the tempest. If that soul
Deem not the after-stirrings come from Thee,
As answer, to console or to command,
But that itself creates them, it were well
To audience them as if they came from Heaven,
And soon they will approve themselves. For truth
Is not imagined; it has been with Thee
In all eternity: and when it comes,
It carries its own proof in needing none.

God takes unnumber'd tongues. The elements
Have bidden me to whence I came.—

You dream!
The outward fact was still the inward dream
Until men saw it clearly. All may see
Alike the face of things: but pierce the skin,
And seek their spirit with the inward eye,
Then who shall say to any one “You dream?”
As who can say the loved do not possess
That beauty which their lovers see in them:
The deeper truth to the intenser sight?
In things dissimilar to other eyes
The Poet shows a likeness; then all eyes
Can see how like they are. Nor is his view
The final. There's a meaning in each thing
That fills all depths of vision up to God's;
And all are satisfied till vision deepens
And wants the deeper.

That which starts a thought—
If only by suggestion—speaks, since mind
Had, but for the suggestion, miss'd the thought.
And had not Nature first reveal'd her truths,
Mind were as empty as a cast-up shell,
With one eternal sound of vacancy.

I pray'd God give me nobler work! The storm
Straight seem'd to bid me back to that I left;—
And how God answers prayer, who shall say?
The duties which a man at any time
May find before his hand, are wholly his,
Though all the world cry, How unlike the man!
In them, or in the cause that made them his,
His double will be found, his inner self,
Whose outward haunting gives him never peace,
Till in fulfilment it find wholesome life,
Or rest in honest failure.—Wouldst thou find
Thy heart's elected work, pass through, not round,
The task that even error has made thine.
For in the midst of uncongenial toil,
E'en by the way of doing it, a man
May raise the office that he longs to fill.—
No man may shape the world to suit himself:
But—form'd his own heart's model—let him work
At anything, and we shall see how soon
It draws about a man a fitting garb.

And this, or nothing, from the Day's rude throat
I could translate—this when my inward ear
Would listen: when it closed, the outward shell
Took nothing but the hoarseness of the Day.
And thus all things speak inwardly—they speak
Like oracles, that seem to disappoint,
Because we take the outward meaning only.—
A King was prophesied, surpassing all
Earth's former kings in glory. When He came,
No one believed the meek and lowly man
Of Nazareth, in very truth was He.
So when we seek high missions, and are told
They wait us in the drudgery despised,
Who is it has the faith to find them there?