 | The progress of mind |  |
TO HIS BROTHER,
DAVID SCOTT,
AS A FRATERNAL TESTIMONIAL (THOUGH A SMALL ONE)
OF HIS GREAT LOVE AND ESTEEM,
W. B. SCOTT
INSCRIBES THESE VERSES.
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THE PROGRESS OF MIND: AN ODE.
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I.
1.
Most beautiful of depths, unlimitedWonder to the wandering soul;
Wide home of worlds, thou azure dread
In which our earth doth roll.
And thou great sun, whose light for ever given
To all, doth make it venerate the heaven,
Where thou dost live who generatest heat
And love, throughout all hearts that breathe and beat.
And thou, moon, wandering patiently
Through the silver wrack of the nightly sky,
Mother of holy hope and joy,
And music, which the gods employ;
And thou, the god of worlds afar,
Lamp-seeming fretted star;
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Of breeze and blossom, sunshine and stark boughs,
Thunder's vast tremor and the lightning's range,
Smiles of pied flowers, and fragrant tears of dew;
Of rigid mountain's rain-bared brows,
Whose steps the primal generations knew.
All might of changeless nature, air,
And earth, and ocean multitudinous;
All that the brotherhood do share,
Or in exchange of harmonies rejoice—
With human language, thus
I call upon ye, every form and voice,
Every thought-giving influence,
From your mystic regions hence!
Man doth command: the song of good
Awakens for ever your solitude!
2.
And whose white feet so buoyantlyHold o'er the bending flowers their way?
The Dryad whose continual smile
Leaves not the waking buds meanwhile;
The nymph who from the grotto'd stream
Rises like a rainbow's gleam.
The fawn uncouthly snores profound,
His face unto the sky;
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And plaited basket by him lie,
Filled with forest nut and pine;
Awakes he as they pass, along
Speeds he to join their dance and song.
3.
“Unto the human power, whose voiceMakes sister Echo's heart rejoice
With laugh and song's quick changes free,
And sorrow's soft pale melody:
With melting lyre and startling horn,
And thoughtful words of spirit born.
Who shears the dry stems from the vine,
Round whose supports its tendrils twine,
And 'neath its shade who seeks repose
When the holy eve doth close.
Who drives the noxious worm away
From spring or stream, from leaf or spray.
For him we fill the bowl, his home
Shall be our temple-dome:
For him we heap the fruits, his board
Shall be our altar stored.”
The wisdom-hornēd Pan
Heard, as over his capacious brow
Meander'd sympathetic glow;
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Smiled on the demi-god young man,
As Nature multiform before
His feet her wealth came forth to pour.
II.
1.
O'er the gold-encrusted sandOf a sun-browned land
The Ganges widens to the sea,
Islanded by lotus and banian tree;
Upon its shore rise towers,
And domes by pillar'd roofs upborne,
And paths are through its mountains worn
By art's concentred powers.
But from those caverns deep
What feezing whispers shrilly creep!
The yearning of man diseased, for more
Than he may find in nature's store.
Tradition clothes itself in life,
And in the throes of manhood's strife
With ignorance, to the forms that stand
Around, the work of his own hand,
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From humble adoration grows.”
Oh, well these lyre-like names he knows,
And manhood bows for hoped release
From mastering fear and from his pains repose.
But fear, not love, from their marble eyes
Falls on him kneeling, and there he lies.
2.
A cypher'd tongue is formed, a scrollThat thoughts laborious doth unroll
On the papyrus dried appears—
Oh, strange! the wisdom of the sages' years,
The life-time of the world is there,
By fable and by prophecy laid bare.
Thence speculations dark as is their cause,
Shed their sepulchral glimmering on the shrine,
That by the herd is bowed to as divine,
While the initiated scoffers pause
To bid them kneel again,
That they may tighten still their soul-inearthing chain.
3.
And now a luminous train doth passFrom gardens, porticoes, and gates of brass.
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The juices and the sweets of wine;
Who taught the husbandman to hail
The Twins, the Virgin, and the Scale;
Who taught the miner's armed hand
O'er radiant gold and steel command;
And he who taught the pains that creep
Through life's pulse to be soothed in sleep;
And lo, before the obedient gale
The oar-limbed car doth sail,
And the joyful song of mariners,
The hearts of waiting thousands stirs:
What treasure doth it bear,
What gold of distant streams, what sweets of distant air,
What diamond's starrier sheen,
What emerald's livelier green,
To enthrone luxury,
To strengthen or to beautify?
4.
Another pageant more augustPasses unscathed by the charnel's dust,
Cinctures of adamant around
Their Promethean temples bound.
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And echoed it to mortal ears;
Who carved from plane-tree boughs the Dorian flute,
And gave their breath to the lyre and lute.
They whose tongue's enwreathen speech,
Mightier than the thunders roll,
That over heaven's whole breadth doth reach,
Captive hath led the wide-eyed soul.
A vastly circled theatre
By Attic multitudes astir—
Hark! as a storm across the sky,
The shout of fame that cannot die,—
Triumph! the poet bows,
While the votive wreath sinks o'er his brows.
And now the queen of nations rears
Many a conquered monument;
And, lictor-guarded, there appears
A senate on high councils bent:
Before the judges stands with arms outspread,
And eager port and regal head,—
While reason's fire his eyes illume—
The living eloquence of Rome;
And through the empire's girdless realms afar
His voice decrees, for peace or war.
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III.
1.
Ages advancing change: from the bare northWhat clang, heart-sickening, rings forth?
The jarring of a quiver stored,
The griding of a whetted sword.
Red the sea-foam swells and glances,
Where their galley's beak advances;
On each heavy-laden head
Brazen glory hath been shed.
Gods! the terror of that sound—
That struggle for life that ploughs the ground—
Heaven severs, to its yawning wrack
Odin hails the spirits back.—
The wine-press of the chariot-wheel;
The wine, how plentiful, how high!
The song bursts from them as they reel
Writhing, the song of agony—
Passion, mighty to destroy!
Is this the hushed dell-haunting strain
Wherewith Greece rejoiced to toy,
Gladdening her god-loving vein?
The night-bird of the north
Rattles her stifling wing,
The Moslem sabre of the south
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Ha, ha! the seven-hilled city still
Ever-craving power doth fill—
Ha, ha! the triple-crested king!
2.
Where now Phœnician purple's glow?Where Persia's gold embossed bow?
Where is Egypt, that old wonder?
Hath passion conquered intellect—the hand
Rebelled against the mind's command?
Hath the gothic raven's wings
Darkened wisdom to fledge kings?
No! like an eternal thunder
O'er our late-built cities driven,
The voices of the sages still endure,
Gathering from us new power more pure;
And from the plunder of a ravaged world
Hath liberty arisen, and hurled
Her right arm to the seventh heaven.
3.
Ages advancing change: in the scorner's chairThe doubter sits, his famed scholastic stole
Gathering by silver-seeming clasp of lead:
And as the humbly-mitred head
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His hand, unbaptised, lays it bare.
A scaffold rises—weltering gore
Down the shameless steps doth pour;
That scaffold is a king's last bed,
That blood from an ermined trunk is shed:
Demoniac laughter at his fall
Maddens the Franks' freed capital.
Flame-crested Liberty hath trampled ruth,
And barbed her spear with the tiger's tooth.
The strife now stills, the tide doth rise breast-deep
Where Custom and her blind mate sleep;
And with its far resounding motion
Onward wears heaven-glassing ocean.
IV.
1.
Say, ye who know, what power doth climbThe world unheeding the pilgrim Time?
What power, unscathed by his passing wing,
Gathers strength in journeying?
What power doth lift the shadowing beard
Of oblivion stark and worn?
Whose eye from out the tomb has glared
With a subtler life? What power unborn
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To love, to strength, to destiny?
What power, when these shrines sank dust worn,
Rose in more strenuous youth,
And standing on the 'glyphic piles
Of worship past, superior smiles,
Offering to the later man
What was of old poured libative to gods,
And binding on his hair the flowers,
Which erst were temple-pavement's dowers?
What power in loving earth's green sods,
Lifteth an universal scan,
Feeling itself a chained deity?
2.
Philosophy!Sun of the mind's unmeasured sky,
Where tend thy wondrous rayings—where
The glory lighted thus we may not bear?
Oh! dreamless soul, whose eye's firm light
Beacons to thoughts and deeds of might,
Deep yearning for enduring good,
For soul-sustaining food:
Thou searchest inward to the grave,
And upward through the stars that pave
The bounds of our mortal sight:
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Through nature, guiding to her transient goal:
But not thus satisfied wilt thou,
Like an o'er laboured giant, bow.
Onward, onward is the prize
For which of old thou didst arise,
To which thou tendest now.
3.
A farewell to my lay! a vision wakes,A vision of the willing heart;
Oh, that they yet may prove, my God,
Prophetic words I now impart!
What years, what cycles have gone by
Of unrecorded history.
What thoughts then voiceless lived or died
To everlasting things allied,
It matters not; pain hath come down
Like snow upon an Alp's bald crown.
Ages have come and gone,
Ages shall come and go;
The pyre still loftier hath grown,
Still loftier shall grow.
Seated beneath the evening, while the palm
Breathes through its wavering fingers balm;
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Around his roof-tree, warbling love;
Nor old, nor boy-like, but of that mid year
When the dark hair is longest never shorn;
E'er on the round limbs marks of toil appear,
And yet the untried doubt of youth outworn;
The man of coming days
My visioning displays.
Through his unimpassioned soul what flows
That giveth him an ancient god's repose?
Thinks he of roseate loves, of golden gain,
Of festive odours, or of wars blood-rain?
Thinks he of flattery's lull, of truncheon'd power,
Of wine, or, like a seer, of death's dark hour?
Thinks he of science, or of star-crown'd art,
Or of the laborous joyance they impart,
Or of that sage of old,
“Knowledge is power,” who rightly told?
No, he hath felt all and hath pass'd
Onward to happiness at last.
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