Fables in Song :: :: University of Virginia Library

I know them all: and, knowing all they are,
Know all they are not. Custom's slaves! content
To crawl about in search of food, and sleep,
And crawl about again in search of food;
To squat in frowzy holes, and hatch to life
Dull reproductions of the lifelessness
Of their own dulness; sloth for rest mistaking,
And stupefaction for serenity;
Sleeplike, to mimic death, till death itself
Death's imitation stops, and there an end!
Thus lose they all the lives they never lived.

Even as the cold and muddy-coated carp
Knows nothing of the hare that on the heath
Nibbles in fear and flits, nor she of him;

187

So each within his petty pinfold hugs
A huddled life. And unto these the whole
Immeasurable universe appears
A stagnant puddle where they spawn; to those
The copse that gives them covert, or the chink
Wherein they burrow. This beholds in heaven
Only a cistern for such rains as bring
The worms he wants; that other in the sun
A kiln that bakes him berries. To what end,
O Time, dost thou from bright to sable turn
The restless spheres of thy revolving hours?
Whence slide the silver twilights in between,
Dreamily shuddering? Say, what is't ye roll,
Night-wanderers mute, in mystic vapour veil'd,
That linger laden on the lone hill-tops,
And pass, like sorrows with a tale untold?
Who wrought the unimaginable wrong
Thou callest upon ruin to redress,
Thou moaning storm that roamest heaven in vain,
Triumphant never, never long subdued,
Beautiful anarch! Answer, morn and eve,
Why to your coming and departing kiss
Blush, wrapt in rosy joy, the mountains old?
What happens nighest heaven, and unbeheld,
To speed thee headlong from thy native haunts,
Wild torrent cradled in the tranquil cold?
What suicidal rapture, or what pang
Of virgin purity, by whom pursued,
Lures thee to where in liquid sanctuary
The lake receives thee, like a fallen queen

188

That comes, with all the trouble of her life
Upon her, seeking peace in cloister'd glooms?
O wondrous world! for whom, by whom, are these
Thy wonders wrought? who recognises them?
And who rejoices in them? The Alone,
Is that the sum and summit of the All?

What is it? who hath discover'd
The spell of the old enchantment
That hovers over the forest,
And shudders along the leaves;
And is whisper'd wider from bough to bough,
Till, heaving the whole deep heart o' the woods,
It is heard in their inmost twilights;
Where tremble the grasses untrodden,
And the multitudinous blossoms
Burst and drop unbeheld?
Harken! the ancient voices!
A music of many songs!

“We tend to the high, and we tend to the deep,
'Twixt the two worlds o'er us and under.
With our boughs we peep at the heaven, and creep
With our roots thro' the earth, in wonder.

“Heaven comes not down, and earth lets not go:
By them both in our bound to us given.
And so we live, endlessly wavering so,
'Twixt the bliss of the earth and heaven.”

189

The ancient voices! the forever young!
They come, they go. We question them, in vain,
Whence are they? wherefore? whither do they go?
And they reply not, going as they come.

All round the rolling orb, from life's first wail
On infant lips to griefs that look their last
Thro' dying eyes, the hunted question runs,
Whence? wherefore? whither? Is it not enough,
This rich metropolis of sense, this throng'd
Majestic theatre, on whose orb'd stage
Force acts forever? Is it not enough
Without a second? not enough, when full
To overflowing is the costly cup
Of infinite sensation? Up and down,
And all sides round, is this receptacle
Of feeling fill'd: and yet for evermore
The soul, uplifted on each rising wave,
Perceives a still-receding bliss beyond;
And each horizon reach'd, in turn, reveals
Another and another. O delight
Surpassing thought and utterance, to behold
The innumerable moving multitudes
Of matchless forms in whose dispersion dwells
Life's revelling unity, and draw them all,
A world, into the soul, herself a world!
And, best of all, still all, when at the best,
Seems the beginning of a better still.
Then what is wanting? What is left to wish
Till the heart aches with wishing? Woe is me,

190

Who, thro' creation roaming, nowhere find
Peer, comrade, or companion! Winds and beams,
That round me weave the wide air's watchet woof,
Thou all-embracing firmament, and you
Sea waves, and winding rivers, and wild rills,
That, far beneath my uncompanion'd throne,
Visit all lands, O tell me where he dwells,
If such a being ye have found, whose soul
May share with mine this solitude of sight!