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ODE.
EMOTION AND THOUGHT.
I.
The floods of vast Emotion heave;Then towards the shore of sense outgushing,
Their trembling billows cleave,
With a moan-mingled glee,
To its firm bosom, rushing
Thereon, like to a crested sea
Clasping the brawny land,
And thence rebounding,
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On the eternal sand.
II.
Not from a rash admiringStir in your amplest deeps,
But with a calm aspiring,
That ye may grandly wake
Your great twin-brother Thought, who sleeps
O'ercanopied by visions. Shake
The dew of common dreams
From his big eye, which gleams
Bold lightning, in the welcome heat
Surging from fonts that dart
Creative breath, as beat
The swollen pulses of your heart.—
Rouse ye, your strength with light enwreathing,
High sovereign Thought,
That blest Emotion's procreant breathing
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To perdurable forms by you,—
Forms beautiful as true.
III.
The measureless waters and the airKeep themselves clean with motion,
Bathed ever in the ocean
Of universal light. More fair
Than speech can tell
Earth rises from her star-watched rest,
Resplendent 'neath the spell
Of powers within her quickened breast,—
Creation's voiceless powers, that leap
Forever in warm nature's womb,
And know nor check nor sleep,
Nor death's material doom;
Eternally alive and rife
With affluent life;
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Daily on mortal vision wheeled,
In beauty's myriad thoughts and forms,
And the dark majesty of storms.
IV.
In tiniest thingsIs instant revelation
Of this transcendent life, which sings
Interminable jubilation,
And flings
On shore and sea
Everlastingly,
Ethereal radiance, whose quick glow
There where its fires
Feed infinite desires,—
Within the bounteous heart of man,—
Is deeper now than aye,
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Inflaming us to feel and know
How much we are, how much we can.
V.
Upon our opened eyesRushes Infinity,
Poured in us from the skies:
Eternity
Broods ever on the inward senses:
The centres we
Of such circumferences!
Out of ourselves so far we stretch,
In holiest moments we can catch
Glimpses of th' unimaginable glare
Of higher homes, and list their jubilee,
Voiced like a million clarions' trophied blare
Heard faintly o'er a subject sea.
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VI.
Unhatched abilities,Beautiful possibilities,
Live in your soundless deeps,
Supreme illimitable twain!
Their latent life it is that keeps
You profluent towards a higher plane,
They who uplift and lave humanity,—
Which else in swinish trough had lain,
Unfeeling of Infinity,
Unthinking of Eternity,
Whose awful presences
Transfigure fleshly essences,
Swathing in a pellucid zone man's being,
Through which he feels the vision of the Allseeing.
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VII.
Immeasurable Emotion,Unconquerable Thought,
By whose inmarried motion
All best ascendancies are wrought;
Upmount ye, interfused
For mutual beneficence,
Your diverse strength conjointly used
Against the downward pull of sense;
Each lifting each,
So ye may reach
Into the empyrian day
Of supersensuous truth,
Whose indefatigable ray
Knows not the night of pause,
Regendering ceaselessly worn manhood's youth
With the ever freshened forces of anointed laws.
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VIII.
What a glad aweO'erfills the expectant soul,
When vaulting thought
Of being's courses grasps a new law
On the scaled ramparts of the Whole;
And thence supremely taught,
More festering rags
From the cold back of ignorance drags,
And grown humanely bold,
Casts on our nakedness
Another fold
Of warm truth's sacredness.
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