Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Since we toward Highgate bent our way,—
Three poets—loving friends and true
The skies had on their brightest blue,
The air was fresh with fragrant hay.

Scarce out of London's smoke and din
We heard the mower whet his scythe,
The summer birds were singing blithe,
Like creatures without care or sin.

And we, almost as blithe as they,
(For life in us was fresh and strong,)
With talk and jest and snatch of song
Beguiled the progress of our way.

359

One was a youth who clomb to fame
By paths than song more swift and sure,—
No soul less selfish or more pure
Hath graced the senatorial name.

The second hath, since ripening age,
Been from the Muses haunts estranged,
Through which in youth his genius ranged—
Its patrimonial heritage.

A teacher such as earth hath few,
Though, ill repaid and underprized,
His greatness all unrecognised,
His lifelong toil doth he pursue:—

A fetter'd eagle, link on link
He drags a soul-corroding chain,
Too constant-hearted to complain,
Too brave beneath his load to sink.

Him, on that well-remember'd day,
We others followed to the shrine
Of wisdom and of song divine,
The homage of young hearts to pay,

And hear those wondrous lips unfold,
In tones of inspiration high,
Such truths as to prophetic eye
In trance ecstatic are unroll'd.

Blandly, our triple league to greet,
The sage of tongue heaven-kindled came,
Already of decrepit frame,
Ill balanced on unsteady feet.

360

He, by his clerkly, grave attire,
A Christian pastor might have seem'd,
But in his eye seraphic gleam'd
Effulgence of celestial fire.

We mark'd the broad expanse of brow,
The prematurely silver hair,
The streams of music rich and rare
Which through those parted lips did flow.

Awed by that mighty presence, I
Was silent like a bashful child;
But he, with condescension mild,
And frank, ingenuous courtesy,

His sovereignty awhile resign'd,
And with a kind, familiar air,
Subdued, to light which we could bear,
The lustre of his inner mind.

The hand of Retzsch had newly then
On Goethe's art its own essay'd,
And “Faust” was on the table laid,
The pencil vying with the pen.

But touch'd with all pervading light,
Which from that mystic mind did stream,
The painter's and the poet's dream
Were straight transfigured in our sight.

On every page, on every line,
Intense illumination play'd,—
A glory not its own, which made
What else seem'd devilish, half divine.

361

And though 'twas mine, in later days,
The inspiration of the seer
In fuller, deeper flow to hear,
And bask in more unclouded rays

Emitted from that glorious orb,—
Yet that one hour on Highgate hill
Doth, o'er the rest remember'd, still
My spirit's retrospect absorb.

And still to me, by Goethe's pen
Spell-bound, or Retzsch's living page,
Comes back the memory of the sage
Who steep'd them both in sunlight then.

My youthful years had past away,—
Again I stood beside his door,—
The poet-soul was there no more,—
Its empty frame unburied lay.

In me it woke mysterious awe,
To think that he, that lord of song,
Had yielded, like the vulgar throng,
To death's inexorable law:

That light, not oft in ages sent,—
Which yet had in the darkness shone
Uncomprehended,—now was gone
For ever from our firmament.

But ere that awe had lost its spell,
'Twas merged in sorrow more profound;—
Beneath a distant churchyard mound
Was laid a child beloved too well.

362

Almost they parted side by side,—
The babe whose days were scarce a span,
And he, the hoary-headed man,—
The sinless and the sanctified;—

The sage profound in thought and lore,
The child whose thought had scarce begun,—
Both battles fought, both races run,
Both landed on the eternal shore.

Together at the Judgment throne
Perchance they stood; and who shall say
What difference then between them lay,—
Which spirit had the riper grown:

What, if at one triumphant bound
The child in death may overleap
The toilsome progress, long and steep,
By which the man hath wisdom found?

What, if the saint's long war with sin,—
If all the study of the sage,
From earliest youth to latest age,
Renew not so the world within,—

Nor so the spirit's range expand,
Nor so illume its inward eye
To view, in vision clear and nigh,
The wonders of that unknown land,—

As his whom pure baptismal grace,
Still all unsoil'd as when 'twas given,
Hath made unconscious heir of Heaven
And fit to see his Father's face?