 | The Poetical Works of David Gray |  |
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Fame.
A Fragment.
O glorious Fame! next grandest word to God,Father of all things beautiful and grand,
Of all the thoughts ideal and sublime
That grace the annals of our literature.
Thou stirrer of the heart to noble deeds!
Thou powerful antidote to cringing fear
Of battle, rolling 'mid the billowy smoke
That wreaths its curls blue over flood and field!
In the cold, creaking garret, or beside
The entrance to a theatre, or where
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Or where the dew-bent daisy droops to kiss
The dark grey eggs of lark, companion sweet!
There thou dost lift their souls above this world,
And teachest them in language fair and wild,
To ope their hearts in strains of poesy.
Ah, noble Fame! how deeply I adore
Thy altar, smelling sweet with fond applause!
Sages may shun, philosophers may scorn;
But, ah! to a young heart, how glorious
The thought that he, by well-earned merit, shall
Be spoken of, yea praised, 'neath the roof-tree
Of peasant, or beneath the monarch's dome!
That learned men will wonder, and in joy
Will lift their hands and shake astonished heads;
That by the fireside, while the flick'ring lamp
Doth send its shadow-forming light athwart.
The genius young shall read, and read, and read
Until the warning bell strike one short hour,
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Dream of the happy-gifted one that wrote it;
That maidens, high in rank and fair in form,
Shall speak to one another of that man
Who, bathing in the pure Castalian fount,
Arose, and from his form with pearlets clad
Shook off the diamonds in bright profusion,
That, while the clouds do tell their pattering beads,
And through the forest roars the wailing wind
Sporting with the brown leaves that wheel aloft,
A joyous family, seated by a fire
That roars in laughter at the storm without,
Talked of the poet—
| The Poetical Works of David Gray | |