ODE
[_]
Read before the Alpha Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, Harvard University, June 26, 1890.
I
In the white midday's full, imperious show
What glorious colors hide from human sight!
But in the breathing pause 'twixt day and night
Forth stream those prisoned splendors, glow on glow;
Like billows on they pour
And beat against the shore
Of cloud-wrought cliffs high as the utmost dome,
To die in purple waves that break on dawns to come.
II
Divine, divine! O, breathe no earthlier word!
Behold the western heavens how swift they flame
With hues that bring to mortal language shame;
Swelling and pulsing like deep music heard
On sacred summer eves
When the loud organ grieves
And thrills with lyric life the incensed air,
While 'mid the pillared gloom the people bow in prayer.
III
Now is it some huge bird with monstrous vans
That through the sunset plies its shadowy way,
Catching on outstretched pinions the last play
Of failing tint celestial! See! it spans
Darkly the fading west,
And now its beamy crest
Follows from sight the glittering, golden sun;
And now one mighty wing-beat more, and all is done.
IV
But in those skyey spaces what dread change!
Thus have we seen the mortal turn immortal;
So doth the day's soul die, as through death's portal
The soul of man takes up its heavenward range.
A million orbs endue
The unfathomable blue—
Till, the long miracle of night withdrawn,
The world beholds once more the miracle of dawn.
V
Dawn, eve, and night, the iridescent seas,
Bright moon, enlightening sun, and quivering stars,
The midnight rose whose petals are the bars
Of Boreal lights, the pomp of autumn trees,
The pearl of curvèd shells,
The prismy bow that swells
'Gainst stormy skies—these witness, these are sign
Of thee, O spirit of Beauty, eternal and divine!
VI
And fairer still than all,—chief sign of all,—
The naked loveliness in Eden's bower,
Whose flesh blusht back the tint of fruit and flower;
Whose eye reflamed the starlight; who could call
Father and friend the God
That pluckt them from the sod;
The Almighty's image, and Creation's hight;
Whose deep souls mirrored clear the circling day and night.
VII
Spirit of Beauty! 'neath thy joyful spell
Man hath been ever; therefore doth each breeze
Bring to his trancèd ears glad melodies,—
Voices of birds, the brook's low, silvery bell,—
Wild music manifold,
Which he hath power to hold
His own enchanted harmonies among,
That echo round the world the songs that nature sung.
VIII
And thus all Beautiful in Holiness
Doth Israel stand before the Eternal One;
Striking his harp with rapt, angelic tone,
Till tribes and nations the Unseen God confess;
Knowing that only where
His face makes white the air
Could such seraphic song have mortal birth,
One saving faith sublime to keep alive on earth.
IX
And therefore with most passionate desire
And longing, man yearned ever to express
Thy majesty, and light, and loveliness,
O Spirit of Beauty, unconsuming fire!
Therefore by ancient Nile
Rose the vast columned aisle,
And on the Athenian Hill the wonder white
Whose shattered glory is the world's supreme delight.
X
So is it that to thy imperial shore,
Bright Italy! the generations fly,
Even but once to breathe, or e'er they die,
Where did a godlike race its soul outpour;
Its birth divine revealing
On glorious wall and ceiling,
While dome and rhythmic statue, Beauty-wrought,
Declare all human art is but what Heaven hath taught.
XI
Fair Italy! whose dread and peerless hight
The song is of the awful Ghibelline!
Poet! who 'mid the threefold dream divine
Didst follow Art and Love to the Central Light!
Tell us, O Dante! tell
What thou dost know so well,
That horror and death are but the shade and foil
Of Beauty, deathless, godlike, with never scathe or soil.
XII
Spirit divine! man falls upon the sod
In awe of thee, in worship and amaze:—
Thou older than the mountains, or the blaze
Of sunsets, or the sun; thou old as God;
As God who did create
Long ere man reached his state
All shapes of natural Beauty that men see,
And His wide universe did dedicate to thee.
XIII
Ye who bear on the torch of living art
In this new world, saved for some wondrous fate,
Deem not that ye have come, alas, too late,
But haste right forward with unfailing heart!
Ye shall not rest forlorn;
Behold, even now, the morn
Rises in splendor from the orient sea,
And the new world shall greet a new divinity.
XIV
Shall greet, ah, who can say! a nobler face
Than from the foam of Cytherean seas:
Loveliness lovelier; mightier harmonies
Of song and color; an intenser grace;
Beauty that shall endure
Like Charis, heavenly-pure;
A Spirit solemn as the starry night,
And full as the triumphant dawn of golden light.
