 | Erato, number II |  |
I.
How, with the texture of our very brain,
The history is wov'n
Of Greatness, and its fate!
Thought, in the hour of unrepose,
So rambles in the grave-yard of great deeds,
Among the dark and leaning stones,
Copying upon the mind
The records written there,
That Sleep but forms a world, where o'er again
Greatness enacts the god, or plays the fool.
The history is wov'n
Of Greatness, and its fate!
Thought, in the hour of unrepose,
So rambles in the grave-yard of great deeds,
Among the dark and leaning stones,
Copying upon the mind
The records written there,
That Sleep but forms a world, where o'er again
Greatness enacts the god, or plays the fool.
In a large library of various books,
Where the gilt trifle of our tinsel age
Contrasted strangely with the folio huge,
Whose venerable back was dark with eld,
And bending with its weight,—I had, all day,
Been brushing off the dust, that months and years
Of undisturbed repose, had gathered thick
On many a curious work; and glancing through
Neglected volume after volume, charged
My mind with food for years of after thought.
The heroes of the times of holy writ,
And seers and sages of those ancient days;
The poets, orators, historians,
And wise philosophers of olden Greece,
And haughty and imperial Rome; and those
Of this our late but not degenerate day;
Were ransack'd, in that mood we sometimes feel
For opening, helter-skelter, many books,
To gather bits of knowledge here-and-there.
Where the gilt trifle of our tinsel age
Contrasted strangely with the folio huge,
Whose venerable back was dark with eld,
And bending with its weight,—I had, all day,
Been brushing off the dust, that months and years
Of undisturbed repose, had gathered thick
On many a curious work; and glancing through
Neglected volume after volume, charged
My mind with food for years of after thought.
The heroes of the times of holy writ,
And seers and sages of those ancient days;
The poets, orators, historians,
And wise philosophers of olden Greece,
6
Of this our late but not degenerate day;
Were ransack'd, in that mood we sometimes feel
For opening, helter-skelter, many books,
To gather bits of knowledge here-and-there.
The Life had just been published of a man
Whose dazzling genius had amazed the world;
But whose ambition him had led astray,
Until the world revolted at his crimes.
I took it to my room; and midnight came,
And found me poring o'er its pages still.
An hour, and then another, pass'd; and then
A generous gust of the delicious wind
Of June, came through an unseen broken pane,
And quench'd the midnight taper. Feverish,
And worn, upon the cool and open book
I laid my cheek; and soon was fast asleep.
Strange visions crowded on my fancy; strange,
And awful some of them: And this is one.
What an infinity of space, and time,
The mind will travel in an hour of sleep!
Whose dazzling genius had amazed the world;
But whose ambition him had led astray,
Until the world revolted at his crimes.
I took it to my room; and midnight came,
And found me poring o'er its pages still.
An hour, and then another, pass'd; and then
A generous gust of the delicious wind
Of June, came through an unseen broken pane,
And quench'd the midnight taper. Feverish,
And worn, upon the cool and open book
I laid my cheek; and soon was fast asleep.
Strange visions crowded on my fancy; strange,
And awful some of them: And this is one.
What an infinity of space, and time,
The mind will travel in an hour of sleep!
| Erato, number II | |