University of Virginia Library

Long while the Eagle answer'd not. Long while
His grave regard in mute perusal stray'd
O'er those small weary limbs; whose palpitation
The lingering trouble of their recent toil
And all their natural weakness still betray'd
With gasp and pant. A melancholy smile
Grew as he gazed, and in his deep eyes stay'd.
Was it compassion? Was it admiration?
Or aught between the two? At last, he said
“So be it. I recognise thine aspiration.
Enjoy the life for which thou wast not made.
Thou art not of my kind. But, being here,
Receive ungrudged the guerdon of thy thrift.
I give thee welcome with no stinted cheer.
What nature hath denied thee as a gift
Seize, if thou canst, as toil's due recompense.
Look forth! The world is round thee. Boldly lift
Thy gaze o'er yonder summits whose intense
Keen frozen facets cut the crystal air.
The glacier glitters from afar, behold!
Deep down, the forest welters. Deeper still
Long many-coloured lowlands, field and fold,
Glimmer. And hark, the rushing of the rill!
When to his rest the sun thro' heaven is roll'd
He finds not where his kingly head to lay
Save on the orbèd sea's dark bosom cold,
Or 'twixt these solitary peaks that stay
The struggling clouds. There, propt on billowy gold,
He ponders, smiling, till he sinks away,
Creative projects, and on each and all
Some parting gift, or promise sweet, bestows.
Love decks the lowly: grace redeems the small
In glorious colour clothed, the naked glows:
Mantled and crown'd upon the mountains tall
Sits contemplative Grandeur: grave Repose
Finds in green glens fit haunts of shadowy air:
Blithe Plenty builds her dwelling on the plain:
The vales are for Enjoyment. Everywhere
The gracious Sun hath some divine domain
Created for his countless children fair.
Young Morn, his minstrel, makes him music. Noon,
His ardent minister, with sultry brow
Hums hot and zealous. Like a mid-day moon
Pale from the mountains fades the sky-born snow,
Lost in the life of leaping rivulets.
Eve loves him best. She blushes, and is still.
And when he leaves her with soft tears she wets
The flowers he kiss'd. Night peers from hill to hill
And darkens with despair, not finding him;
Then lights her watchful stars, and waits—in vain,
For die she must before he comes again.

“From this grey crag in æther islanded
I once at dawn, before the dark was done,
Full east my solitary pinions spread,
Seeking the sunken sources of the sun.
Chill o'er me hung the icy heavens, all black
Behind their fretted webs of fluttering gold.
Beneath me growl'd the grey unbottom'd sea,
Inwardly shuddering. O'er her monstrous back
With restless weary shrugs in rapid fold
Her many-wrinkled mantle shifted she;
And scraped her craggy bays, and fiercely flung
Their stones about, and scraped them back again;
Gnawing and licking with mad tooth and tongue
The granite guardians of her drear domain.
Faint in transparent twilight where I gazed
Hover'd a far-off flakelet of firm land.
Barely chin-high above the waters raised,
Peer'd the pale forehead of that spectral strand.
Thither I wing'd my penetrative flight.
The phantom coast, uncoiling many a twist
Of ghostly cable, as a diver might,
Swam slowly out to meet me, moist with spray.
But, ere I reach'd it, like a witch, the night
Had melted, first into a mist
Of melancholy amethyst,
Then utterly away.
And all around me was the large clear light
And crystal calm of the capacious day.

“But oh, what was it, land or sea,
Or both, or neither, under me,
That floating in the sunrise lay?
A solid sea of sliding sand,
A waving waste of liquid land,
Light blown by winds that leafless be
Up yellow bays where blooms no tree
And grows no grass, it seem'd.
And there, in vast and vivid light
By burning ardours bathed, the bright
Unbroken Desert dream'd.
How softly, how stealthily still,
Did the pure sun over it peer!
Not a rustle of leaf or of rill
Not an echo of pastoral cheer!
But the earth and the sky, with a burning sigh
Embracing, became as one.
For bare was the heaven, as the desert, and even
The desert shone like the sun.

“Never barren that desert shall be, tho' it bear
To the burning embrace of his beams
Not a blade, or a leaf, or a blossom, for there
Is the birthplace of visions and dreams.
Now look forth o'er the numberless host of the hills,
And behold, in its glory and grace
What the sun hath accomplish'd. His influence fills
All the throbbing abysses of space.
He his force hath embodied in forms without end,
And his will in his work is set forth.
Earth and water and air with each other contend
To interpret and publish his worth.
In the great, in the small, from the depth to the height,
Thrills the pulse of his procreant powers.
He beheld the world dark, and hath bathed it in light,
Found Earth naked, and clothed her with flowers.”