Angels that, side by side, upon our way,
Walk with and warn us!
Hark! the world so loud,
And they, the movers of the world, so still!
What gives this beauty to the grave? the shroud
Scarce wraps the Poet, than at once there cease
Envy and Hate! "Nine cities claim him dead,
Through which the living Homer begged his bread !"
And what the charm that can such health distil
From withered leaves - of poisons in their bloom?
We call some books immortal! Do they live?
If so, believe me, TIME hath made them pure.
In Books, the veriest wicked rest in peace-
God wills that nothing evil should endure;
The grosser parts fly off and leave the whole,
As the dust leaves the disembodied soul!
Come from thy niche, Lucretius! Thou didst give
Man the black creed of Nothing in the tomb!
Well, when we read thee, does the dogma taint?
No; with a listless eye we pass it o'er,
And linger only on the hues that paint
The Poet's spirit lovelier than his lore.
None learn from thee to cavil with their God,
None commune with thy genius to depart
Without a loftier instinct of the heart.
Thou mak'st no Atheist thou but mak'st the mind
Richer in gifts which Atheists best confute
FANCY AND THOUGHT! 'Tis these that from the
Lift us! The Life which soars above the brute
Ever and mightiest, breathes from a great Poet's lute !
Lo! that grim Merriment of Hatred ; * born
Of him, the Master-Mocker of Mankind,
Beside the grin of whose malignant spleen,
Voltaire's gay sarcasm seems a smile serene,
Do we not place it in our children's hands,
Leading young Hope through Lemuel's fabled lands?-
God's and man's libel in that foul yahoo!-
Well, and what mischief can the libel do?
O impotence of Genius to belie
Its glorious task its mission from the sky!
Swift wrote this book to wreak a ribald scorn
On aught the Man should love or Priest should
And lo! the book, from all its ends beguiled,
A harmless wonder to some happy child!
All books
grow homilies by time; they are
Temples, at once, and Landmarks. In them, we
Who but for them, upon that inch of ground
We call "THE PRESENT," from the cell could see
No daylight trembling on the dungeon bar;
Turn, as we list, the globe's great axle round,
Traverse all space, and number every star,
And feel the Near less household than the Far!
There is no Past, so long as Books shall live!
A disinterred Pompeii wakes again
For him who seeks yon well; lost cities give
Up their untarnished wonders, and the reign
Of Jove revives and Saturn : At our will
Rise dome and tower on Delphi's sacred hill; Bloom Cimon's trees in Academe; * - along Leucadia's headland, sighs the Lesbian's song; With Egypt's Queen once more we sail the Nile, And learn how worlds are bartered for a smile; Rise up, ye walls, with gardens blooming o'er, Ope but that page — lo, Babylon once more!
Ye make the Past our heritage and home;
And is this all? No; by each prophet-sage -
No; by the herald souls that Greece and Rome
Sent forth, like hymns, to greet the Morning Star
That rose on Bethlehem by thy golden page,
Melodious Plato - by thy solemn dreams,
World-wearied Tully!— and, above ye all,
By THIS, the Everlasting Monument
Of God to mortals, on whose front the beams
Flash glory-breathing day
To the dark Bourne beyond; in you are sent The types of Truths whose life is THE TO-COME; In you soars up the Adam from the fall;
In you the FUTURE as the PAST is given
Ev'n in our death ye bid us hail our birth;
Unfold these pages, and behold the Heaven,
Without one grave-stone left upon the Earth?
THE BEAUTIFUL DESCENDS NOT.
THE BEAUTIFUL DESCENDS NOT.
IN Cyprus, looking on the lovely sky,
Lone by the marge of music-haunted streams,
A youthful poet prayed:
"Descend from high,
Thou of whose face each youthful poet dreams.
Once more, Urania, to the earth be given
The beauty that makes beautiful the heaven.”
Swift to a silver cloudlet, floating o'er,
A rushing Presence rapt him as he prayed ; What he beheld I know not, but once more
The midnight heard him sighing to the shade, Again, again unto the earth be given
The beauty that makes beautiful the heaven."
"In vain," a sweet voice answered from the star, "Her grace on thee Urania did bestow: Unworthy he the loftier realms afar,
Who woos the gods above to earth below;
Rapt to the Beautiful thy soul must be,
And not the Beautiful debased to thee!"
THE LONG LIFE AND THE FULL LIFE. 327
THE LONG LIFE AND THE FULL LIFE.
IMITATED FROM CLAUDIAN'S "OLD MAN OF VERONA."
IN mine own hamlet, where amidst the green
By moss-grown pales white gleaming cots are seen,
There dwelt a peasant in his eightieth year,
Dear to my childhood- now to memory dear;
In the same hut in which his youth had passed
Dwelt his calm age, till earth received at last;
Where first his infant footsteps tottering ran,
Propped on his staff crawled forth the hoary man;
That quiet life no varying fates befell,
The patriarch sought no Laban's distant well;
Of Rothschild's wealth, of Wellesley's mighty name,
To that sealed ear no faintest murmur came.
His grand event was when the barn took fire,
His world the parish, and his king the squire.
Nor clock nor kalend kept account with time,
Suns told his days, his weeks the Sabbath chime;
His spring the jasmine silvering round his door,
And reddening apples spoke of summer o'er.
To him the orb that set o'er yonder trees,
Tired like himself, lit no antipodes;
And the vast world of human fears and hopes
Closed to his sight where yon horizon slopes.
That beech which now o'ershadows half the way,
He saw it planted in my grandsire's day;
Rooted alike where first they braved the weather,
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