University of Virginia Library

1.

Say, ye who know, what power doth climb
The world unheeding the pilgrim Time?
What power, unscathed by his passing wing,
Gathers strength in journeying?
What power doth lift the shadowing beard
Of oblivion stark and worn?
Whose eye from out the tomb has glared
With a subtler life? What power unborn
Raised fair shrines of fabled truth
To love, to strength, to destiny?
What power, when these shrines sank dust worn,
Rose in more strenuous youth,
And standing on the 'glyphic piles
Of worship past, superior smiles,
Offering to the later man
What was of old poured libative to gods,
And binding on his hair the flowers,
Which erst were temple-pavement's dowers?
What power in loving earth's green sods,
Lifteth an universal scan,
Feeling itself a chained deity?

2.

Philosophy!
Sun of the mind's unmeasured sky,
Where tend thy wondrous rayings—where
The glory lighted thus we may not bear?
Oh! dreamless soul, whose eye's firm light
Beacons to thoughts and deeds of might,
Deep yearning for enduring good,
For soul-sustaining food:
Thou searchest inward to the grave,
And upward through the stars that pave
The bounds of our mortal sight:
Thou know'st the laws necessitous, that roll
Through nature, guiding to her transient goal:
But not thus satisfied wilt thou,
Like an o'er laboured giant, bow.
Onward, onward is the prize
For which of old thou didst arise,
To which thou tendest now.

3.

A farewell to my lay! a vision wakes,
A vision of the willing heart;
Oh, that they yet may prove, my God,
Prophetic words I now impart!
What years, what cycles have gone by
Of unrecorded history.
What thoughts then voiceless lived or died
To everlasting things allied,
It matters not; pain hath come down
Like snow upon an Alp's bald crown.
Ages have come and gone,
Ages shall come and go;
The pyre still loftier hath grown,
Still loftier shall grow.
Seated beneath the evening, while the palm
Breathes through its wavering fingers balm;
The red bee lighting on his hand; the dove,
Around his roof-tree, warbling love;
Nor old, nor boy-like, but of that mid year
When the dark hair is longest never shorn;
E'er on the round limbs marks of toil appear,
And yet the untried doubt of youth outworn;
The man of coming days
My visioning displays.
Through his unimpassioned soul what flows
That giveth him an ancient god's repose?
Thinks he of roseate loves, of golden gain,
Of festive odours, or of wars blood-rain?
Thinks he of flattery's lull, of truncheon'd power,
Of wine, or, like a seer, of death's dark hour?
Thinks he of science, or of star-crown'd art,
Or of the laborous joyance they impart,
Or of that sage of old,
“Knowledge is power,” who rightly told?
No, he hath felt all and hath pass'd
Onward to happiness at last.