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65
PLATO.
AFTER READING MACAULAY'S COMPARISON OF PLATO AND BACON.
I
A pilgrim wanderer, Wisdom's favourite child,Struggling to gain a distant fair countree,
By some lost track across a trackless wild:
A wave-toss'd mariner, whose home must be
In some far port, or on the homeless sea;
But yet no chart, no compass for thy guide,
The skies and waters strange alike to thee;
And thine through wind and tempest forth to ride,
By light of dubious stars athwart the billowy tide.
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II
Such wert thou, Plato! such the task sublimeThat urged thee on, still present to thy soul.
Thy heart was pining for thy native clime,
Though surging oceans, wrapp'd in storms, might roll
'Twixt it and thee: and thou wilt reach the goal,
Or perish in the waters; for heaven's light
On thee hath dimly dawn'd, and earth's control
Bars not thy pathway to a land where night
Is known not, chased away by glories heavenly bright.
III
Perchance it was a momentary gleam,Heaven's smiles on earth are seldom aught beside,
Which lit up thy great soul with that far dream
Prophetic; 'twas enough, thou hadst espied
A beacon that to every doubt replied:
And oft a voice, sweet, silvery clear, and low,
Fell on thy spirit's trancèd ear, and cried,
Home, brother, home! and homeward thou wouldst go,
Though bearing with thee on the exile's heart of woe.
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IV
Yet who can tell the struggles that were thine,Ere, brother, thou couldst pierce the mists of earth,
The gather'd mass of ages, and divine,
'Mid wrecks and ruin, griefs and idiot mirth,
The spirit's immortality and birth?
Seem'd it a rough and mountain wilderness,
A path of lifeless rock and barren dearth?
Yet wouldst thou battle on, and not the less
Though weary and wayworn still upward, onward press.
V
Even as one whose heart is fix'd to scale,Ere break of day, some wild aërial height
Though darkness block his pathway, thence to hail
The sun's first lordly glance with shafts of light
Strike through the clouds and fugitive mists of night.
So, under guidance of some heavenly star,
Vouchsafed in mercy to thy earnest sight,
Rapt heavenward by no prophet's fiery car,
Fearlessly didst thou win that heavenly height afar.
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VI
Yes, thou hast scaled the mountain-tops, great sage,'Mid everlasting things aloft, alone;
But never on thine earthly pilgrimage
The sun arose, nor over time's unknown
Was God's unclouded truth in glory thrown;
Never until thy mortal shackles fell
Like wither'd withs from off thee. Many a one
May scoff, and deem thy labour spared as well
In climbing long lone hours that lofty pinnacle.
VII
They little know the rapturous search for truth;Faint streaks of light are in the eastern sky,
Whereof the far reflexion were in sooth
Full recompense to thine adventurous eye.
The clouds and mists apace are drifting by;
Space, time, worlds, are beneath thee. What if gloom
Still mantle earth with twilight's canopy?
The morn shall break, and with its roseate bloom
Cast beauty over death and glory on the tomb.
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VIII
But some there are whose mean and earth-bound soul,Impatient of the pure ethereal flame
Of heavenly wisdom, would with taunts control
Her and her children, bringing still the same
False tedious charge. Go, let them brand his name,
And scorn the man, the enthusiast, if they will,
Who treads to heaven an upland path of fame.
His eye intent on that eternal hill,
His food, philosophy; philosophy, his rill.
IX
“And is he richer,” lo! they cry, “forsooth?Where are his fruits? his profits? where his gain?
And hath he found in his long search for truth
Wherewith to chase our woes and ease our pain,
And smoothing every roughness from the plain,
The thorny plain of life, lit on a path
Where we in infantine repose again
May live, and dream, and slumber? If he hath,
Come, follow him; if not, eschew his lying faith.”
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X
But the high search for moral rectitude,The laws immutable of men and things,
To trace the true, the beautiful, the good,
And how from hidden and eternal springs
Flow forth the spirit's high imaginings:
What of the pure and heavenly is inwrought
With nature's outward sphere, and round it clings
In magic unison of sense and thought:
Oh, that they reck'd not of, and counted it for nought.
XI
“Fruit, solid fruit,” they cry; “enrich mankindWith happy life, and ease, and plenteous store.”
Blind seers, in their clearsightedness so blind!
Seers! yes, perchance if ever on this shore
Of time we toss'd the pebbles o'er and o'er;
But if 'tis ours athwart a boundless sea
To steer for ever and for evermore,
Sure 'twere as wise, immortal sage, with thee
To freight the undying soul for heaven's eternity.
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XII
And modest Truth, thus hearing them deride,Ever distrustful of herself, the while
Lean'd her fair head in thoughtfulness aside,
And probed her bosom's depths to see if guile
Might linger unawares in secret wile;
But finding none to heaven she raised her brow,
And reading there a bright approving smile,
In fearless confidence gazed upwards now,
Such as to her accuser said, “so couldst not thou.”
XIII
Let them dream on as like them—let no soundOr warning whisper jar that luscious spell
Of slumber; let them lie as if death-bound,
Or muttering, at the chime of every bell,
“Our body breathes and waxes—it is well.”
Thy soul, great prophet, was with thought a-fire,
And knit for life, for action. Who can tell
That native strength of thine that would not tire,
Those burning hopes of glory, that to heaven aspire?
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XIV
As when the rosy-finger'd morn is flushingThe ocean-mists that her bright couch enclose,
When every dewdrop, virgin-like, is blushing
With kisses from the sun on every rose,
The lark, far spurning earth and its repose,
Leaps buoyant on its flight, and, zephyr-driven,
Carols at will to every cloud that flows
On that aërial sea; her guerdon given,
Her sole, her rich reward to drink the airs of heaven.
XV
So thou exultingly didst soar aloft,Perchance thy wing was venturously free,
Thy fancy wild and beautiful, and oft
Thy glowing hopes exuberant in glee;
Yet wisdom owns her favourite child in thee,
Who, battling through the mists of sense and time,
Didst borrow strength of immortality,
And won by warblings from a heavenly clime
Reach that eternal land, of light and love the clime.
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XVI
Hail, happy spirit! when at last the skyBroke glorious on thy gaze, all must have worn
The smile of morning-land unto thine eye,
For thou the weariness of night hadst borne;
And in the glory of that cloudless morn,
Heaven must have bloom'd with all its golden beams,
Unearthly beautiful. Let others scorn;
Be mine the fruitlessness, if such it seems,
Of thy high tasks—be thine the brightest of thy dreams.
1843.
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