University of Virginia Library

CXL.I HAVE WILD MOODS.

I have wild moods (who hath not?) when I long
For midnight tempests, and the boisterous song
And jocund rudeness of the mighty wind;
And when I have a weight upon my mind
To be dispersed by warring element,—
A warp within my soul, to be unbent
At once by the tremendous sympathy
Of rocking woods, rent earth, and reeling sea,—
Moods when the Whence and What and Whither flash
Like a bright arrow o'er my soul, and dash
All meek, good things from their calm pedestals,
Lighting within my spirits' ample halls
A ruinous conflagration, which destroys
In one dread hour the store of peaceful joys
Won from religious ties or hallowed fears,
Or fruit mayhap of consecrated tears,
Tears shed o'er sin, or smiles by Angels brought
In holy churches from a ritual caught.
Moods are they when I bid my soul come bare
From her dim place, that I may gaze at her,
And praise or blame her make; there is in me
At times a hot and fierce desire to see
And realize my immortality:—
When it would be relief to me to heave
A huge unnatural weight of rock, and leave
The mass on some hill-top, for aye to prove
That there is nought man's spirit may not move:—
When I should love to scatter a thick night
Over all lands and oceans, so to blight
The joys of earth, and see all men afraid,
While my one gazing soul stood undismayed.
These are the spirit-wasting moods, yea, these
The fever, restlessness, and weak disease
Of one who prays too seldom: at dead night
Doth the strange spirit come with unstayed might,
Until our open souls grow large and swell
With the influx of dark, invisible
And dire possession, that doth quickly drench
Our powers in sin, and fain our souls would wrench
From the good Cross, which like a floating mast
Unto the shipwrecked, is our first and last
True hope:—and our hands bleed in holding fast.