The poetical works of William H. C. Hosmer

Something besides the judgment in alliance
With memory evolves both heat and light,
When a resistless march is made by science
Against the brood of night.

How circumscribed would be our mortal vision
Without this subtle faculty of mind—
Catching no flowery scent from fields elysian,
Weak, grovelling, and blind!

The will to dare, with this strange power combining,
Derives a force that overcomes mischance;
It warms the breast a noble heart enshrining—
Flames in the poet's glance.

It is the minister that talks divinely
Of things invisible to mortal gaze;
The star that beamed on Milton so benignly
When fallen on evil days.

Though nature grew a blank, and opened sadly
His clouded orbs that found the dawn no more—
While foes rejoiced in his affliction madly,
And blocks were soaked with gore;

All was not dark, for eyes within were planted,
And the great Master looked with reverence still
On grove and fountain by the Muses haunted,
And Zion's heavenly hill.

Those intellects—reverse of the conceptive,
To aught sublime, have never given birth,
Like pictures, without background or perspective,
They are of little worth.

The cestus worn by Venus comprehended
All that could win or charm, the Greeks avow,
But more of beauty with the wreath is blended
That binds a poet's brow.

Ever the graceful and the grand begetting,
Imagination cheers us on our way,
Gives to the gem of truth a golden setting
That makes more rich its ray.

It lends enchantment to our tasks diurnal,
For starry Contemplation builds a tower,
And Love, rejoicing in a youth eternal,
Leads to a deathless bower.

Impatient of all bound, on pinion soaring,
It speeds across wide waste and weltering main,
Or mounts aloft the spirit-world exploring,
That weird and wild domain!

Outshining morn, it gives a purple glory
To mossy rock, herb, flower, and lapsing stream—
Touches the head with time and trouble hoary,
While back comes childhood's dream.

The world of thought could know no worse bereavement
If God who gave should take this power away;
Of the earth, earthy, would man's best achievement
Be from that fatal day.

What moonlight is to holy night, dismissing
The gloom that wrapped both wave and ocean-shore,
Or, as a minstrel truly warbles, “Kissing
Dead things to life” once more,

Is this pure agent to our mental being
Darkness transforming into landscapes fair,
While round to bless and charm our inward seeing
Throng wonders rich and rare.

Although the soil of thought is noble Reason,
Where golden grain by memory is sown,
Our souls would famish—dawn no harvest season,
If fed by these alone.

Imagination is the radiant essence,
The sun maturing fruit on which we feed,
Clothing the soil with rainbow efflorescence,
Quickening the buried seed.

A sense of beauty, grace, and chaste proportion
Flows from its action—otherwise would Art
Nothing produce but shapes of grim distortion
To chill, not warm the heart.

Its agency may ever be detected
When Genius plumes his wing for higher flight,
Or images of grandeur are reflected
From the soul's mirror bright.

Those who decry its influence, and have clamored
Most loudly for the practical and true,
In childhood, of its blossoms were enamored
Pearled with the morning dew.

Poetic raptures in their bosoms springing
Owed to this vital principle their birth,
While music floated round them like the singing
Of angels on the earth.

Of sky and plain it was the rich adorner,
And the full blaze of its enchantment fell
On story books, that to the chimney corner
Bound them as by a spell.

I know that never those ecstatic feelings
That cheered our years of innocence, come back,
That manhood brings its terrible revealings,
Resistance and attack.

But hearts are changed to tombs where wholly perish
Emotions that once made each fibre thrill,
While May-time lingers in the breasts that cherish
Some boyish feeling still.

Of strong Imagination talk not lightly,
It gives the present its progressive start;
To comeliness converting the unsightly
In law, religion, art.

The mind becomes without this throbbing movement
To rouse and thrill, mechanical and cold;
Content to slumber on, without improvement—
Mute slave of custom old!

Deep longings for a nobler life can only
Find home in bosoms glowing with its fire,
Whether they beat in hall or hovel lonely—
Wear mean or rich attire.

To things, without an archetype, is given
Ideal presence, form and color bright,
When by its aid away the mist is driven
That clouded mental sight.

Through its strong action unity essential,
In things that seem to differ we detect;
Hence arguments, conclusive and potential,
Philosophers erect.

It kisses the pale, faded wreath of sorrow
Till back comes fluttering life and vernal green,
And the clear promise of a fairer morrow
Is in the orient seen:

It breathes upon the strings of our existence,
And sweet Æolian melodies arise,
While seraphs wave their white wings in the distance
Called earthward from the skies:

It rears aloft, for man to hold communion
With higher natures, free from mortal leaven,
A golden ladder that produces union
Between dark earth and Heaven:

It blows a silver trumpet when we falter
In upward march, those Alpine heights to gain,
Where gather round an ever-burning altar
A priesthood free from stain

It tolls a solemn curfew, sweetly bringing
To weary Labor balm and soft repose;
And Grief, to hear the deep vibration ringing,
Of rest enamored grows:

Wild lawless Mirth forsakes his work of riot,
The honey-dew of slumber falls on Care—
The lulling sounds have even power to quiet
That Stygian ghost—Despair!

It is the dazzling rainbow overbending
Time's wave, made turbid by a crumbling shore—
Weaver of colors, with the present blending,
And all we loved of yore:

It whispers in the hoary ear of Ocean
And chaunting sirens quit their coral caves,
While sounds are heard that charm to gentler motion
His ever-throbbing waves:

It visits us at night, and we are guided
By singing phantoms to melodious streams,
And walk with lovely shapes that reign divided
Hold in the land of dreams:

It finds the student in his cell despairing,
And drapes the walls with crimson and with gold,
While grandly enter, crown and laurel wearing,
The mighty ones of old:

Deep marks they bear upon their calm proud faces
Of bitter trial borne to win renown;
For all who struggle up to lofty places
Must feel the storm come down.

Call not a fleeting shadow an illusion—
A power that wields such dread and vast control;
That moulds to grace and harmony confusion,
And nerves the drooping soul.

It is the loom that forms a web to cover
With brightness all that sage or bard has wrought—
The “Ακαματον Πυρ” that flashes over
The firmament of thought.

Transmuting spirit! why is Romance grieving
For genii vanished on the “posting air,”
As if the lustrous shapes of thy conceiving
Our mortal doom could share.

Still a response Dodona's oaks are giving,
And naiads haunt Arcadian fount and rill,
In murmuring groves are faun and dryad living,
And Jove is mighty still.

Round Erin's ruined castle lightly sailing,
Where Valor sued for Beauty's hand of yore,
The mystic banshee wakes a note of wailing
For those who come no more.

In merry England nightly to their revel
Mischievous elves and trooping fairies throng,
Waking the silence of her meadows level
With laugh and antique song.

King Arthur, still, with plume and pennon streaming,
To battle hurries from his castle hall,
And famous knights, in dinted armor gleaming,
Obey his trumpet call.

Lithe Ariel, on Prospero that waited,
Twines by the moonlight still her magic wreath,
And the Weird Sisters, by thy wand created,
Dance on the blasted heath.

Imagination is a gift celestial
That Eden's loss to man in part restores;
Starring the twilight of this scene terrestrial
With rays from heavenly shores.

The soul within a breezy tower it stations,
Things high above this rolling orb to note,
As through thin air of lofty elevations
Seems nearer the remote.

Ah! if the spirit never left its prison
Till the pale flag of finite life was furled,
No prophet clothed in terror would have risen
To warn a guilty world.

That preacher follows a mistaken calling
Whose sermon is not living with its flame;
Guilt is not startled from a trance appalling
When utterance is tame.

To common stature would a Webster dwindle,
And spell to charm a Clay no longer own,
Did not this lightning of the mind enkindle
Eye, action, word, and tone.

It waits not for Death's ferryman to row us
O'er the dark waters to a port unknown,
But in our dreams Elysium can show us.
Or Pluto's gloomy throne.

Oh! call not unsubstantial—but a vapor—
That which can stir the heart's unsounded deep,
And prompt Ambition, by his midnight taper,
Long, wasting watch to keep;

Can vivify, exalt, refine, transfigure—
Of true impassioned eloquence the source,
From which cold fact derives a pulse of vigor,
Mere words, victorious force.

Unreal? no! in transport it unites us
To climes of milder sky and purer air,
And with a sweet, persuasive tongue invites us
To taste of nectar there.

Dry learning, force, and logical acumen
Would not hand Plato down from age to age,
Did not this god-like attribute illumine
His philosophic page.

Prose must be pregnant with its spirit burning,
Or in some dusky nook aside be flung,
Even some patient antiquary spurning
The place with cobwebs hung.

Its royal stamp can never be mistaken
On works that bear the searching test of time,
Alike emblazoned on the page of Bacon
And Chaucer's rude old rhyme.

Costly morocco, clasp and gilded cover,
Will not avail a barren book to save,
And black Lethean waters soon close over
Its unrecorded grave.

Ethereal sparks must flash through what is written
To make an author's name a household word
On loving lips, though states with wreck are smitten,
In court and cottage heard.

A pensioned press and critical pretenders
May give the vapid passport for a day,
But when assailed by merit's true defenders
It melts like mist away.

The product must be genuine, or fashion
And shifting taste will prove it worse than vain;
The mocking forms of counterfeited passion
Impress nor heart, nor brain.

A vivid outline must be first engendered,
Forerunner of a ripening into deed;
To mortal work was never homage rendered
That did not thus proceed.

Our inward eye beholds the stately building
Ere corner-stone is laid, or hammer rings,
Hall, winding stair, and chambers rich in gilding,
Base, buttress, tower and wings.

Language provides poor symbols of expression
When roused Imagination, holding reign,
Sends airy forms of grace in vast procession
Across the poet's brain.

An Orphic tongue would be too weak an agent
To tell the tale of inspiration's hour;
To paint an outline of the gorgeous pageant—
A Titian have no power.

The meagre, written record of the closet
Saves but a few, pale glimmering pearls—no more—
When the lashed waves roll inland to deposit
Their wealth along the shore.

Within, a stream of poesy is gushing
That spoken word would freeze in its wild flow,
And lovelier tints the current deep are flushing
Than art will ever know.

The Queen of Beauty and her blushing daughters
In Crathis bathed—that old poetic stream—
And each dark ringlet from the sparkling waters
Imbibed an amber gleam.

Thus thoughts that send and will send on forever,
From the dim plains of long-ago, a light
Caught from Imagination's golden river
Their glow divinely bright.

When done with life, its fever, din and jostle,
How scant and poor a portion after all
Of Nature's Priest and Art's renowned Apostle
Lies hid beneath the pall.

Though grazing herd and hosts with clanging sabres
Their graves forgotten trample rudely o'er,
To tribes and nations, through their crowning labors,
They speak for evermore.

Oh! Genius! dowered with privilege immortal,
Thus from the wastes of time to stretch thy hand,
And, with a touch, unfold the glittering portal
Of an enchanted land!

Death knows thee not, though long ago were blended
Thy bones with indistinguishable clay,
The dead are they whose mission here is ended—
Thy voice is heard to-day.

Heard on the honeyed lip of Juliet melting—
In dreaming Richard's cry of guilty fear;
In shouts that rise above the night-storm pelting
From old distracted Lear.

Heard in the organ-swell of Milton pealing—
In Gray's elegiac sorrow for the past—
In flute-notes from the muse of Spencer stealing,
And Dryden's bugle-blast!

Heard in the matchless works of thy creation,
Speaking from canvass, scroll, and marble lips,
In those deep, awful tones of inspiration
That baffle death's eclipse.

University of Virginia Library

UTILITY OF IMAGINATION.