The Downing legends : Stories in Rhyme :: :: University of Virginia Library

Who never gazed with sparkling eye
On gleam and shape of fairy mead;
Who never saw the elfin sky
One moment glow like Heaven indeed;
Who never heard the lorelei sing
Till all his blood like lava ran;
I count him but a lumpish thing,
Not worth the lordly title, Man.

The weak behold the mighty fall,
And, marvel how their feet should slip;
The sheltered pinnace tells the yawl
How ocean whelmed the lofty ship;
The cripple keeps his blood and breath
When battle lays the champion pale;
The ant surveys the lion's death,
And says, “Behold me strong and hale!”
The daisies smile superior
When giant oaks bestrow the plain:

They only felt a zephyr stir;
Aloft it was a hurricane.

There never yet was groundling mole
That perished climbing peaks of snow;
There never yet was pigmy soul
That bore Promethean sin and woe.
No levin rends the fluttering leaf,
No wreck befalls the grubbing hind,
No syren music lures the deaf,
No demon star misleads the blind;
While he, the chief, the kingly one,
Whose noble blood is throbbing fire,
Whose haughty pinions seek the sun,
Whose aim is ever high and higher;
How often doth his swiftness drive
Through dazing gleams or blinding glooms!
How often must the lightning rive
His daring might of splendid plumes!

He finds a more than human grace
Where flesh discovers flesh alone;
He sees beyond the outer face,
He sees the soul upon its throne;
He clothes another with himself,
And therefore finds her passing fair.
He sees the god within the elf;
He sees the fiends as once they were.
He bends the knee where others stand,
Because he has the second sight;
He seems the fool of all the land,
Because he loves with all his might.