University of Virginia Library

XXIII.

[I often think our wants have given us more]

Deep buried in these streets of filth and din,

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And jostling crowds, how doubly sweet to me
The country village and the mountain-side!
The woods and meadows come into my mind,
And live in me, since I may not in them.
The morning milk-cart brings with it the farm,
And gives it to my longings, and the squire,
Who comes in search of life, enriches me
With the domain that he has left behind.
Their fields and herds, their gardens, woods and lawns,
Could sink no trulier into my heart
Were I the squire and farmer. They are mine
Without their trouble—bought with golden love.
There is no truer purchase: love a thing,
'Tis thine. The whole world cannot break the bond,
Or make it any stronger. We forget
That by the mind alone are things possess'd.
Our long day-dream we spend in making them,
By some imagined outward bond, our own:
Misfortune wakens us, or death at last,
And all our tenures melt, save that of love.

So given are we to realize our wants,
That when I've been condemn'd to country life—
For which my city days so much had pined—
I straight began the city to re-live.
The country served the lungs with sweet new air,
Gave bracing to the limbs, bronze to the cheeks—
Grew admirable cabbages: but life
Fell also into vegetable sloth.
I felt a need of the great city's crush,

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Its theatres and churches, halls and marts,
Its virtues and its vices—yea, its crimes—
To stir the under-currents that impel
The tide of being. If I seldom mix'd
In these when with them, but still lived recluse,
The conscious might have, seem'd to be enough.
I lived them in the faces that I pass'd.
The preacher's fervour and the actor's passion
Break through stone walls, give spirit to the winds:
We breathe them in the air along the streets.
We catch the unheard music of the halls
In people's steps: and the romance of ships
Comes to us in the sailor's swarthy face,
As through the streets he swings.—In sooth, it needs
Not the material presence of a thing
To have it and enjoy it. If I lose
A much prized book that I have barely read,
How eagerly I read it in the loss,
And make it doubly mine! I almost think
A wish'd-for book, that we have never read,
And only know its theme, is thus made ours.
'Twould seem the craving someway draws the thoughts
From Nature's store, or from the author's brain;
And when we get the book, we already know
Its best conclusions.—There's one sea of mind—
The very God in whom all souls exist—
From whom they draw, forever, life and thought,
In ways to them unknown. All books, and arts,
And sciences, are scoopings from that sea;
And they grow old and stagnate; but the sea

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Is new and fresh forever. It supplies
The well-springs of all being. We have known
Of knowledge got by study, and dear sight
Burnt out with midnight books: but genius draws
The selfsame knowledge from the springs that break
Far down in its own nature.