Pure souls honor'd and blest By former ages, who else— Such, so soulless, so poor,
Is the race of men whom I see— Seem'd but a dream of the heart, Seem'd but a cry of desire. Yes! I believe that there lived Others like thee in the past, Not like the men of the crowd Who all round me to-day Bluster or cringe, and make life Hideous, and arid, and vile; But souls temper'd with fire, Fervent, heroic, and good, Helpers and friends of mankind.
Servants of God!—or sons Shall I not call you? because Not as servants ye knew Your Father's innermost mind. His, who unwillingly sees One of his little ones lost— Yours is the praise, if mankind Hath not as yet in its march Fainted, and fallen, and died!
See! In the rocks of the world Marches the host of mankind, A feeble, wavering line.
Where are they tending?—A God Marshall'd them, gave them their goal.
Ah, but the way is so long!
Years they have been in the wild! Sore thirst plagues them, the rocks, Rising all round, overawe; Factions divide them, their host Threatens to break, to dissolve. —Ah, keep, keep them combined! Else, of the myriads who fill That army, not one shall arrive;
Sole they shall stray; in the rocks Stagger for ever in vain.
Die one by one in the waste.
Then, in such hour of need Of your fainting, dispirited race Ye, like angels, appear, Radiant with ardor divine! Beacons of hope, ye appear!
Languor is not in your heart, Weakness is not in your word, Weariness not on your brow. Ye alight in our van! at your voice, Panic, despair, flee away.
Ye move through the ranks, recall The stragglers, refresh the outworn, Praise, re-inspire the brave! Order, courage, return;
Eyes rekindling, and prayers, Follow your steps as ye go. Ye fill up the gaps in our files, Strengthen the wavering line, Stablish, continue our march, On, to the bound of the waste, On, to the City of God.
MEMORIAL VERSES
April, 1850
Goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Greece, Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease. But one such death remain'd to come; The last poetic voice is dumb— We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.
When Byron's eyes were shut in death, We bow'd our head and held our breath. He taught us little; but our soul Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw Of passion with eternal law; And yet with reverential awe We watch'd the fount of fiery life Which served for that Titanic strife.
When Goethe's death was told, we said: Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head. Physician of the iron age,
Goethe has done his pilgrimage.
He took the suffering human race, He read each wound, each weakness clear; And struck his finger on the place,
And said: Thou ailest here, and here! He look'd on Europe's dying hour Of fitful dream and feverish power; His eye plunged down the weltering strife, The turmoil of expiring life—
He said: The end is everywhere,
Art still has truth, take refuge there! And he was happy, if to know Causes of things, and far below His feet to see the lurid flow Of terror, and insane distress, And headlong fate, be happiness.
And Wordsworth!—Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice! For never has such soothing voice Been to your shadowy world convey'd,
Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade Heard the clear song of Orpheus come Through Hades, and the mournful gloom. Wordsworth has gone from us—and ye, Ah, may ye feel his voice as we! He too upon a wintry clime Had fallen—on this iron time
Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears. He found us when the age had bound Our souls in its benumbing round; He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.
He laid us as we lay at birth
On the cool flowery lap of earth,
Smiles broke from us and we had ease; The hills were round us, and the breeze Went o'er the sun-lit fields again; Our foreheads felt the wind and rain. Our youth returned; for there was shed On spirits that had long been dead, Spirits dried up and closely furl'd, The freshness of the early world.
Ah! since dark days still bring to light Man's prudence and man's fiery might, Time may restore us in his course Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force; But where will Europe's latter hour Again find Wordsworth's healing power? Others will teach us how to dare, And against fear our breast to steel; Others will strengthen us to bear— But who, ah! who, will make us feel? The cloud of mortal destiny, Others will front it fearlessly— But who, like him, will put it by?
Keep fresh the grass upon his grave O Rotha, with thy living wave! Sing him thy best! for few or none Hears thy voice right, now he is gone.
The sea is calm to-night,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;—on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night air! Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land, Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand. Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.
Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night
LONG fed on boundless hopes, O race of man, How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare! Christ," some one says, was human as we are; No judge eyes us from Heaven, our sin to scan; We live no more, when we have done our span."
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