 | The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman |  |
II
THEME
“What shall my song rehearse?” I said
To a wise bard, whose hoary head
Is bowed, like Kearsarge crouching low
Beneath a winter weight of snow,
But whose songs of passion, joy, or scorn,
Within a fiery heart are born.
To a wise bard, whose hoary head
Is bowed, like Kearsarge crouching low
Beneath a winter weight of snow,
But whose songs of passion, joy, or scorn,
Within a fiery heart are born.
“What can I spread, what proper feast
For these young Magi of the East?
What wisdom find, what mystic lore,
What chant they have not heard before?
Strange words of old has every tongue
Those happy cloistered hills among;
For each riddle I divine
They can answer me with nine;
Their footsteps by the Muse are led,
Their lips on Plato's honey fed;
Their eyes have skill to read the page
Of Theban bard or Attic sage;
For them all Nature's mysteries,—
The deep-down secrets of the seas,
The cyclone's whirl, the lightning's shock,
The language of the riven rock;
They know the starry sisters seven,—
What clouds the molten suns enfold,
And all the golden woof of heaven
Unravelled in their lens behold!
Gazing in a thousand eyes,
So rapt and clear, so wonder-wise,
What shall my language picture, then,
Beyond their wont—that has not reached their ken?
For these young Magi of the East?
What wisdom find, what mystic lore,
What chant they have not heard before?
Strange words of old has every tongue
Those happy cloistered hills among;
For each riddle I divine
They can answer me with nine;
Their footsteps by the Muse are led,
Their lips on Plato's honey fed;
Their eyes have skill to read the page
Of Theban bard or Attic sage;
For them all Nature's mysteries,—
The deep-down secrets of the seas,
The cyclone's whirl, the lightning's shock,
The language of the riven rock;
They know the starry sisters seven,—
What clouds the molten suns enfold,
And all the golden woof of heaven
Unravelled in their lens behold!
Gazing in a thousand eyes,
So rapt and clear, so wonder-wise,
What shall my language picture, then,
Beyond their wont—that has not reached their ken?
154
“What else are poets used to sing,
Who sing of youth, than laurelled fame and love?
But ah! it needs no words to move
Young hearts to some impassioned vow,
To whom already on the wing
The blind god hastens. Even now
Their pulses quiver with a thrill
Than all that wisdom wiser still.
Nor any need to tell of rustling bays,
Of honor ever at the victor's hand,
To them who at the portals stand
Like mettled steeds,—each eager from control
To leap, and, where the corso lies ablaze,
Let out his speed and soonest pass the goal.
Who sing of youth, than laurelled fame and love?
But ah! it needs no words to move
Young hearts to some impassioned vow,
To whom already on the wing
The blind god hastens. Even now
Their pulses quiver with a thrill
Than all that wisdom wiser still.
Nor any need to tell of rustling bays,
Of honor ever at the victor's hand,
To them who at the portals stand
Like mettled steeds,—each eager from control
To leap, and, where the corso lies ablaze,
Let out his speed and soonest pass the goal.
“What is there left? what shall my verse
Within those ancient halls rehearse?”
Deep in his heart my plaint the minstrel weighed,
And a subtle answer made:
“The world that is, the ways of men,
Not yet are glassed within their ken.
Their foster-mother holds them long,—
Long, long to youth,—short, short to age, appear
The rounds of her Olympic Year,—
Their ears are quickened for the trumpet-call.
Sing to them one true song,
Ere from the Happy Vale they turn,
Of all the Abyssinian craved to learn,
And dared his fate, and scaled the mountain-wall
To join the ranks without, and meet what might befall.”
Within those ancient halls rehearse?”
Deep in his heart my plaint the minstrel weighed,
And a subtle answer made:
“The world that is, the ways of men,
Not yet are glassed within their ken.
Their foster-mother holds them long,—
Long, long to youth,—short, short to age, appear
The rounds of her Olympic Year,—
Their ears are quickened for the trumpet-call.
Sing to them one true song,
Ere from the Happy Vale they turn,
Of all the Abyssinian craved to learn,
And dared his fate, and scaled the mountain-wall
To join the ranks without, and meet what might befall.”
| The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman | |