Your creeds are dead, your rites are dead,

Your social order too!

Where tarries he, the Power who said:

See, I make all things new?

The millions suffer still, and grieve

And what can helpers heal

With old-world cures men half believe

For woes they wholly feel?

And yet they have such need of joy!
And joy whose grounds are true,
And joy that should all hearts employ
As when the past was new!

Ah, not the emotion of that past,
Its common hope, were vain!

A new such hope must dawn at last,

Or man must toss in pain.

But now the past is out of date,

The future not yet born

And who can be alone elate,

While the world lies forlorn?

Then to the wilderness I fled.

There among Alpine snows

And pastoral huts I hid my head,
And sought and found repose.

It was not yet the appointed hour!
Sad, patient, and resign'd,

I watch'd the crocus fade and flower,

I felt the sun and wind.

The day I lived in was not mine;
Man gets no second day.

In dreams I saw the future shine,

But, ah, I could not stay!

Action I had not, followers, fame;

I pass'd obscure, alone!

The after-world forgets my name,

Nor do I wish it known.

Gloom-wrapt within, I lived and died,

And knew my life was vain.

Whith fate I murmur not, nor chide! At Sèvres by the Seine

(If Paris that brief flight allow)

My humble tomb explore;

It bears: Eternity, be thou

My refuge! and no more.

But thou, whom fellowship of mood

Did make from haunts of strife
Come to my mountain-solitude

And learn my frustrate life;

O thou, who, ere thy flying span
Was past of cheerful youth,
Didst seek the solitary man

And love his cheerless truth

Despair not thou as I despair'd,
Nor be cold gloom thy prison !
Forward the gracious hours have fared,
And see the sun is risen.

He melts the icebergs of the past,
A green, new earth appears!
Millions, whose life in ice lay fast,

Have thoughts, and smiles, and tears.

The world's great order dawns in sheen

After long darkness rude,

Divinelier imaged, clearer seen,

With happier zeal pursued.

With hope extinct and brow composed

I mark'd the present die;

Its term of life was nearly closed,

Yet it had more than I.

But thou, though to the world's new hour
Thou come with aspect marr'd,

Shorn of the joy, the bloom, the power,

Which best beseem its bard;

Though more than half thy years be past,

And spent thy youthful prime;

Though, round thy firmer manhood cast,

Hang weeds of our sad time,

Whereof thy youth felt all the spell,

And traversed all the shade

Though late, though dimm'd, though weak, yet tell Hope to a world re-made!

Help it to reach our deep desire,
The dream which fill'd our brain,
Fix'd in our soul a thirst like fire,
Immedicable pain!

Which to the wilderness drove out

Our life, to Alpine snow;

And palsied all our deed with doubt,

And all our word with woe!

What still of strength is left, employ,

That end to help men gain:

One mighty wave of thought and joy Lifting mankind amain!'

The vision ended! I awoke

As out of sleep, and no

Voice moved-only the torrent broke

The silence, far below.

Soft darkness on the turf did lie;

Solemn, o'er hut and wood,

In the yet star-sown nightly sky,

The peak of Jaman stood.