 | Historical Odes and Other Poems |  |
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Sympathy; an Ode.
Wild are the dreams of youth,
While all is yet unknown;
The bitterness, the ruth
With which the world doth groan;
The cares that weigh like stone,
And fretful pangs uncouth.
While all is yet unknown;
The bitterness, the ruth
With which the world doth groan;
The cares that weigh like stone,
And fretful pangs uncouth.
Then all is changed; behold
The gloomy fiend, the minister of ill,
Who haunteth human life
In shapes as manifold
As there are joys, or promises of joy;
Who hath as many stings wherewith to kill
As there are happy creatures to destroy.
And hath he power to wound
That concord with his strife,
That harmony, that confidence
In which divinest youth is lapped; to chill
That exultation fine,
That rapture of the sense?
With sweat of agony
To bow that forehead to the ground
Which should be lifted to the gentle air,
And bathed in nature's soft serenity;
Serenity divine
Of influences fair?
The gloomy fiend, the minister of ill,
Who haunteth human life
In shapes as manifold
As there are joys, or promises of joy;
Who hath as many stings wherewith to kill
As there are happy creatures to destroy.
And hath he power to wound
That concord with his strife,
That harmony, that confidence
In which divinest youth is lapped; to chill
That exultation fine,
That rapture of the sense?
With sweat of agony
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Which should be lifted to the gentle air,
And bathed in nature's soft serenity;
Serenity divine
Of influences fair?
Yes, even so it is:
Despondency and fear
Can limit all the scope, curtail the bliss:
Or bitter care to dross
Can turn each golden year;
Or penury makes bare
Her lean and threatening arm,
Turning with surest pangs all gain to loss;
Like a dissolving charm,
That leaves a wretch forlorn
In some foul sorceress' bosom lying
Whom he had deemed most fair;
With spasm the wretch is dying;
His dream did not his life outlast;
The while a palsy wind
Shakes the green wood behind.
Despondency and fear
Can limit all the scope, curtail the bliss:
Or bitter care to dross
Can turn each golden year;
Or penury makes bare
Her lean and threatening arm,
Turning with surest pangs all gain to loss;
Like a dissolving charm,
That leaves a wretch forlorn
In some foul sorceress' bosom lying
Whom he had deemed most fair;
With spasm the wretch is dying;
His dream did not his life outlast;
The while a palsy wind
Shakes the green wood behind.
And yet life's visionary part may be
Preserved, O Sympathy, by thee:
Sweet goddess, gentle child
Of heaven, sister of love,
Distilling in the spirit
Thine own sweet manna from above
Rare and mild:
Dispelling by thy power
The fiends that darkly lower
O'er the chaotic scene of human strife;
The fiends that did from curses old inherit
The power to make the earth unearthly,
And gender phantoms of vacuity
Upon the hideous semblances of life.
Preserved, O Sympathy, by thee:
Sweet goddess, gentle child
Of heaven, sister of love,
Distilling in the spirit
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Rare and mild:
Dispelling by thy power
The fiends that darkly lower
O'er the chaotic scene of human strife;
The fiends that did from curses old inherit
The power to make the earth unearthly,
And gender phantoms of vacuity
Upon the hideous semblances of life.
What, if the sea far off
Do make its endless moan;
What, if the forest free
Do wail alone;
And the white clouds soar
Untraced in heaven from the horizon shore?
What, if all nature's mystery
Ear cannot hear, eye cannot see,
While men with mutual scoff,
Tortured and torturing, wage
From broken youth to hideous age,
A hellish war on one another's peace?
No reed that's shaken with the wind need we
Go out to see;
Nor lean an aching ear upon the shore
To listen for the ocean's roar:
Nay, should the havoc and the strife increase,
And drag us downward to the core
Of the foul battle, thou, oh Goddess, thou,
Divinest Sympathy, canst evermore
Send grand remembrance to the brow
Of shapes long worshipped in the green
Poetic world, and evermore
Send whispers of the glories all unseen,
So that the common walks of life do soar
Into wide haunted grot, and dim receding shore.
Do make its endless moan;
What, if the forest free
Do wail alone;
And the white clouds soar
Untraced in heaven from the horizon shore?
What, if all nature's mystery
Ear cannot hear, eye cannot see,
While men with mutual scoff,
Tortured and torturing, wage
From broken youth to hideous age,
A hellish war on one another's peace?
No reed that's shaken with the wind need we
Go out to see;
Nor lean an aching ear upon the shore
To listen for the ocean's roar:
Nay, should the havoc and the strife increase,
And drag us downward to the core
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Divinest Sympathy, canst evermore
Send grand remembrance to the brow
Of shapes long worshipped in the green
Poetic world, and evermore
Send whispers of the glories all unseen,
So that the common walks of life do soar
Into wide haunted grot, and dim receding shore.
And deep the meaning thou canst show
In that which seemeth sad and base;
More tragic then if pompous: see
The squalid crowd that lines yon alley low:
Irradiate by thy light, oh Sympathy,
They're spirits than Prometheus grander,
Furies more awful than Tisiphone;
And mightier issues in their pale looks glow
Than ever were in fable read;
While gaunt and fierce they wander
Along the dingy street for daily bread.
In that which seemeth sad and base;
More tragic then if pompous: see
The squalid crowd that lines yon alley low:
Irradiate by thy light, oh Sympathy,
They're spirits than Prometheus grander,
Furies more awful than Tisiphone;
And mightier issues in their pale looks glow
Than ever were in fable read;
While gaunt and fierce they wander
Along the dingy street for daily bread.
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