University of Virginia Library

SOUL SENSE.

A sense of something lost, a missing joy
Comes to me often
As I lightly toy
With pleasure, or the uttermost fine fringe
Of exquisite deep pain;
I strangely soften
And feel a touch, that may be even a twinge
Like sorrow or the aftermath of grief
Mature and mellow,
Stirring me within
Above the thought or wish of a relief.
Is it some vanished fellow
Or a fond
Old playmate, who was close to me akin,
In wider worlds most beautiful and fair;
Whose memory haunts me from a bliss beyond,
Like a calm crowned despair?
It hardly troubles
And yet it takes my heart, expands the sky
That is the heaven of hope
Unbounded in its majesty and scope,
And sweetly doubles
The meaning of our dim ambiguous life,
To rapture joined and yet with suffering rife,
And breathes through all my blood Eternity.
What is it,
The strong pull of Powers afar,
Which upward draw
Past yoke of earthly law
My soul, and thus with no infrequent visit
Then leave for me the golden gates ajar?
But nothing clear,
And nothing sound or certain
Results, however sweet
And dread and near
The sense with sound of tinkling angel feet—
Drops on the dawning sight a misty curtain.
And I confess—
Bear with my folly, brother—
I have at times, what words cannot express,
The feeling I am other
Than my comrades here
In mould and measure and aspiring heart,
And do inhale a different atmosphere—
A thing apart.
It is not vulgar pride,
Which lifts me up to glory's giddy tops
And puffs my vanity,
Or with idle sops
Feeds me and fills me to a wild inanity—
The world goes on its way, I stand aside.
I have a hidden faith,
A firm assurance
Of higher steps and holier ancestry
Above mere lineage royal and the wraith
Of earth that lack endurance,
And a birth
That reaches out to all Infinity,
Not spanned by any fortune's splendid girth.
My fashion is not what it seems,
A lot
Deformed by many a narrow bound or blot
And as my neighbour deems,
But orbits vast
With a grand Future and as grand a Past.
I was pre-destined to a princely state,
Perchance not here, but in a goodly land;
To sit upon a throne
And not alone,
But with co-equals in a dazzling fate
And the great custom of command.
I know
Within me, I was born for nothing less
Than perfectness,
Which now I cannot live
In the pale shadow of the Truth below;
I have a high prerogative
And aim;
Which in the fulness of the rounded times
And richer climes,
I shall in triumph claim.
Meanwhile, these thoughts, that well nigh break my heart
With passion more than love,
Are a sweet witness
Unto the precious title-deeds above,
And my clear fitness
For a wider part.