XV.
ON GENIUS.
Thou one and inextinguishable spark
That simmerest on the mossy swamp,
Bright though the earth be dark,
And smothered be the sleeper's lamp:
Genius, thou refuse of divinest light,
Infatuate fire, self-burning amethyst,
Whose visage beams when dingy night
Calls up thy phantom through the mist:
Star of the marsh and fen,
Favoured of Nature, not of men;
How is thy place below so little known,
With but the quagmire for thine own?
The earth its early course has run:
No more an infant cradled in the air,
Nursed at the bosom of the sun
With taintless lips, or thou, O Spirit fair,
Might'st, like thy ever-glorious kin of old,
Have called it thine to dandle in thy arms!
But now the world is cold,
Or man is sated with its charms.
It may revive thy claims, may yet impart
The secret of thy choicest art;
Then, though the stamp of hoofs may mark the mire,
Thou shalt emerge and earth still feed thy fire!
Star of the swamp, thy day the night
Where heaven vain wealth displays,
And the waste drippings of her light
Encrust thee round with rays,
Thou shalt adjourn into the dawn,
With it thy musings blend,
And on the azure of its lawn
Thy dreamy being end!
Meantime grieve on where Nature grieves;
Heed not the blessings man achieves.
Thou hast a shout far other lands to hail
When his poor heart has ceased its wail.
To fellow-suffering give an ear,
In sorrow, thou, and not in glory, trained;
The spring, exuding ever, dwell'st thou near,
Where breathless immortality is gained.
Glory within a film of colour glows;
The bubble is its wreath;
But sorrow in an endless river flows,
Not startled into death.
Cling to thy mire, O Genius bright;
Catch the waste drippings of the light;
Burn 'neath the hoof's unharming tramp;
From the morass renew thy lamp!
The forkèd lustre of the ray unveil,
And through the dismal swamp thy fetters drag:
A creeping glowworm lingers in thy trail,
For those set fast within the troubled quag.
Then, yet again the crutchless wanderers save:
In vain to quit the sedgy waste they strive,
But flounder through a water-venomed grave
To touch no more its vanished bank alive.
Be it the outlaw asks of thee his way,
The devious torch shall take him not astray:
Fateful thy lot, but mercy in thy gleam,
Fulfil in others thy unfinished dream!
EPODE.
But genius is not sought in every mart:
One is not wise in lyrics to descant
When once the wit of man rejects his art,
And warns him coldly to desist from rant.
The pleasant world would thus express its will:
Let science march and poesy stand still.
