University of Virginia Library

HERE, in this Babel where I dwell,
—As, in dead Dante's dream of Hell,
Old bards and sages, for no sin,
Nor glad nor sorry, were within
The Limboes of the infernal land,
Hell's outer courts, to languish banned,
—This city with the face and heart
Of stone, I mostly live apart.
Scant sympathy of heart and mind
I have with those of mine own kind,
Who breathe with me its murky air,
Heavy with tears and toil and care.
No common standard of exchange
We have of thought or feeling: strange
To me their joys and sorrows are
As dwellers in some distant star
And mine to them: their deeds misdone
I deem; their windy prate I shun,
Their witless mirth, their foolish feasts.
But for the dear-belovèd beasts,
The cattle in the ways one meets,
The cats, the horses in the streets,
The dogs, the donkeys and the birds,
These all the worthless gift of words
That lack, wherewith we men are taught
To cover up our want of thought,
The town, for dreamers of my mood,
Would be a swarming solitude,
A desert all the lonelier
That there one scarce hath room to stir
For crowds of folk, the name that bear
Of men, upon two legs that fare,
That are to me alike in form,
That feel, like me, the cold, the warm,
Like me, when rained upon, are wet
And in the sun at noontide sweat,
Yet less in common have with me
Than fishes swimming in the sea,
Are less to me akin, in aught
That sunders man and brute, in thought,
In feeling, sentiment and wit,
Than yonder birds in heaven that flit.

So from my kind I live aloof
And unto those for my behoof
Who branded with the name of “brute”
Are, for that they are mostly mute,
Turn, to the birds and beasts. With these
And their congeners, flowers and trees,
Sun, stars and moon, skies, clouds and breeze,
I dwell and deal in harmony;
For these the features are to me,
The voices of that general Whole,
The world-all's omnipresent Soul,
Which we, for lack of wit to frame
A fitter title, Nature name.
For even here, in this our waste
Of idle toil and witless haste,
The gracious goddess at the call
With succour ready is of all
Whose loving eye and patient ear
Are trained to turn for help to her.
Nay, even in London one can note
Spring's wild-bird warble in the throat
Of Winter wax to April's strong
And blesséd blossom-tide of song
And watch in every leafing way
The budding miracle of May,
Can see sweet Summer blow and burn,
Ember by ember, out and learn
From Autumn's incense-laden breath
The mysteries of Life and Death.

Myself long since to her I gave
To be her singer and her slave;
And though from woods and fields afar,
I know not by what sorry star,
My life has long been doomed to drone
In London's wilds of brick and stone,
I have not lost my youthful sense
Of her abiding immanence
Nor ever looked to her in vain
For peace and solace in my pain,
The solace she alone can give,
The peace that heartens one to live.
Hot from her heart the dreams I drew
Which here for those, alas! too few
Who, even as I do, love and long
For her, I render into song;
And still about me, everywhere,
She glorifies my daily air.
In her approof I rest secure
Who destined is to overdure
The insect hum and fret of men
And as she now is, to be then
Serene and sovereign still, when they
And all their works have passed away.

Here, in this maze of street on street,
This treadmill-round of toiling feet,
This spider's web of straining hands,
As in the silent Libyan sands,
She follows on her fateful way,
Untroubled of our trifling day;
Her patience passionless survives
The riot of our restless lives;
She waits,—the waiting of the Gods,
For whom our worlds are but the odds
And ends of Being and each age
A pin-prick on Creation's page,
—When once the weakling worm called Man
Has wriggled out his petty span
And beats with helpless hands no more
Upon the never-opened door,
To smoothe away the scars that he
Has made on hill and wold and lea
And cover up Life's faded sheen
With broideries of branching green.