University of Virginia Library

Souls know their errands,—yet must live,
Ere speaking, all the truth they give.
Sad must their brooding childhood be
Who teach the old captivity,
And ah! how sad, perplexed and strange
Is theirs who see, but cannot change;
How dark who build not, yet destroy,—
But mine, at last, but mine is joy!

No herald star announced my birth;
Men know not that I tread the earth;
I fashion not the doves of clay
That, when I bid them, soar away;
Nor twine the rose, in sportive need
To make prophetic temples bleed;
Nor look, from eyes of early woe,
The agony I shall not know!
O Purest, Holiest!—not thy path
'Twixt tortured love and ancient wrath
Is mine to follow: none again
Wins thy beatitude of pain:
But all the glory of the Day,
All beauty near or far away,
All bliss of life that, born within,
Makes quick forgetfulness of sin,
Attend me, and through me express
The meaning of their loveliness.

Yonder, the weary, longing race
Conjecture my maturer face,
Nor dream the child's—when they behold
Beneath its locks of sunburnt gold—
That only says: “My life is sweet;
The crisp, cool grasses love my feet;
The lulling air my body takes
To slumber, and the wave awakes;
And pleasure comes from soil and flower,
And out of lightning falls a power,
And from the breath of ancient trees
The vigor that enriches ease,
And from the mountain-haunted skies
The will that ruins, save it rise!”
Be the white wings of Duty furled
To-day, and let me own the world!—
The azure flag-flower basks in heat,
Yet cools, below, her plashy feet;
The footsteps of the breezes pass
In shadow-ripples down the grass,
And glimmers, where the pool is thin,
The slide of many a silver fin.
Beam on my bosom, warmth divine,
Until its pulsing currents shine
Like yonder river's!—pour the flame
Of supple life through all my frame,
Till consciousness of beauty there
Gives me the glory I should wear!
My limbs shall float, my motions be
Each a new change of ecstasy,
Nor shall I breathe except to know
What savors the swift airs bestow,
While pure, as when its beats began,
The heart to music builds the man!

I know I AM,—that simplest bliss
The millions of my brothers miss.
I know the fortune to be born,
Even to the meanest wretch they scorn;
What mingled seeds of life are sown
Broadcast, as by a hand unknown,
(A Demon's or a child-god's way
To scatter fates in wilful play!)—
What need of suffering precedes
All deeper wisdom, nobler deeds;
And how man's soul may only rise
By something stern that purifies.
But here I gather, ere my hour
Shall call, the fresh, untainted power
Of Nature, half our mother yet,
And angry when her sons forget.
Far as the living ether bends
My being through her own extends;
Free as a bird's to sink and soar
O'er meadow, mountain, sea and shore;
One with the happy lives that breed
Their like in spawn, and egg, and seed;
One with the careless motes that stray
To gather gold for dying day,
And with the dainty sorcery
Of odors blown far out to sea,
That say to mariners on the wing:
The unseen earth is blossoming!
But farther, finer, airier yet
A soul may spin its mystic net,
And, with unconscious heart-beat sped
Vibrating on each gossamer thread,
Declare itself and all it gives,
Though, speaking not, it simply lives!