 | Poems |  |
vii
To my Mother
If faultless love demand a faultless lay,
To faultless love what tribute can I pay?
And yet, to whom, the while my voice may reach
Thine ear, that gladdened at my earliest speech,
Should I present my Song, but thee alone,
That love for all its errors may atone?
To faultless love what tribute can I pay?
And yet, to whom, the while my voice may reach
Thine ear, that gladdened at my earliest speech,
Should I present my Song, but thee alone,
That love for all its errors may atone?
'Twas kneeling at thy feet, for good or ill
I suffered poetry's mysterious thrill;
There, from thy soft melodious voice, I caught
The music of the Hebrew minstrel's thought:
“God is my shepherd; I shall never need;
“In pastures green his flocks securely feed,
“By quiet pools my footsteps he shall lead.”
I suffered poetry's mysterious thrill;
There, from thy soft melodious voice, I caught
The music of the Hebrew minstrel's thought:
“God is my shepherd; I shall never need;
“In pastures green his flocks securely feed,
“By quiet pools my footsteps he shall lead.”
And well I know, if prayer may aught avail,
No word of that fond prophecy can fail;
Or if solicitude may access gain
To Happy Island or Elysian Plain,
When all my wanderings on the hills are past,
To safe enclosure I shall win at last!
No word of that fond prophecy can fail;
Or if solicitude may access gain
To Happy Island or Elysian Plain,
When all my wanderings on the hills are past,
To safe enclosure I shall win at last!
What marvel if that Psalm, for thy dear sake,
Attends me, dove-like, as my way I take?
What marvel if to thee my heart assign
The first low breathings of the Breath divine?
Not by the inward ear is only heard
The splendid mode, the grand majestic word:
Thy voice, the very echo of thy heart,
Blends and transcends the eloquence of Art!
Attends me, dove-like, as my way I take?
What marvel if to thee my heart assign
The first low breathings of the Breath divine?
viii
The splendid mode, the grand majestic word:
Thy voice, the very echo of thy heart,
Blends and transcends the eloquence of Art!
So, if the impulse, which thy teaching gave,
Has chafed, impatient, like the river wave
Against the boulders that divide its course,
Yet hold it blameless, sprung from blameless source!
Rejoicing, if the stream, in vain denied
Impetuous passage, flow with fuller tide,
And sweep away the piled, impeding stones,
Where to this hour the mangled current moans!
Has chafed, impatient, like the river wave
Against the boulders that divide its course,
Yet hold it blameless, sprung from blameless source!
Rejoicing, if the stream, in vain denied
Impetuous passage, flow with fuller tide,
And sweep away the piled, impeding stones,
Where to this hour the mangled current moans!
Imagination, counted but a weed,
Obscurely struggles from its buried seed,
And pushing patiently through narrow rifts
Its little life toward the sunshine lifts;
How happy, if expectant Art perceives
The first pale promise of its tender leaves,
And straight transplants it, as a root most rare,
To more congenial soil and tempered air,
Before the World has crushed with lumbering wheel
Its signal to the sky, its lone appeal.
Obscurely struggles from its buried seed,
And pushing patiently through narrow rifts
Its little life toward the sunshine lifts;
How happy, if expectant Art perceives
The first pale promise of its tender leaves,
And straight transplants it, as a root most rare,
To more congenial soil and tempered air,
Before the World has crushed with lumbering wheel
Its signal to the sky, its lone appeal.
To common minds Imagination seems
The mock creator of a world of dreams,
And only bartered value, sold or bought,
The satisfying food for human thought;
They know her not the sole celestial dower
That raises Man above the temporal power
Of popularity and lust of place
And earns him glimpses of celestial grace!
The mock creator of a world of dreams,
And only bartered value, sold or bought,
The satisfying food for human thought;
They know her not the sole celestial dower
That raises Man above the temporal power
Of popularity and lust of place
And earns him glimpses of celestial grace!
ix
This, if the heart be pure and strong the hands,
The crypt-like hut of human life expands;
The walls recede, the roof becomes a dome,
And earth is seen a temple, not a home!
For this was Spenser's magic; this the might
That turned our Milton's darkness into light;
This ministered to Goldsmith's loneliest hour,
And sunned the heart of Shelley into flower:
Sweet influences! Pilgrims, to and fro
Ranging the world, and singing as they go;
Till men, like cattle, captive to the grass,
Raise their slow heads to hear them, when they pass.
If these had not been truant from the school
Of law and physic, or the merchant's stool,
If these, and comrades of their craft, were mute,
Man would be less and nearer to the brute.
The crypt-like hut of human life expands;
The walls recede, the roof becomes a dome,
And earth is seen a temple, not a home!
For this was Spenser's magic; this the might
That turned our Milton's darkness into light;
This ministered to Goldsmith's loneliest hour,
And sunned the heart of Shelley into flower:
Sweet influences! Pilgrims, to and fro
Ranging the world, and singing as they go;
Till men, like cattle, captive to the grass,
Raise their slow heads to hear them, when they pass.
If these had not been truant from the school
Of law and physic, or the merchant's stool,
If these, and comrades of their craft, were mute,
Man would be less and nearer to the brute.
Take, then, my offering, mother, reconciled
To this innate presumption of thy child!
Though need to sing imperatively led
His feet o'er duty's lowland far to tread,
He climbs with souls that do not fear to slip,
He craves their love and claims their fellowship,—
Not ill-contented, as he onward wends,
Though many are his judges, few his friends,
If from the pastures by the river fount
One voice belovèd to the wanderer mount,
That taught him when a child the simple creed,
“God is my shepherd; I shall never need.”
To this innate presumption of thy child!
Though need to sing imperatively led
His feet o'er duty's lowland far to tread,
He climbs with souls that do not fear to slip,
He craves their love and claims their fellowship,—
Not ill-contented, as he onward wends,
Though many are his judges, few his friends,
If from the pastures by the river fount
One voice belovèd to the wanderer mount,
That taught him when a child the simple creed,
“God is my shepherd; I shall never need.”
1895.
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