THE CHANT OF A SOUL.
My youth has gone—the glory, the delight
That gave new moons unto the night,
And put in every wind a tone
And presence that was not its own.
I can no more create,
What time the Autumn blows her solemn tromp,
And goes with golden pomp
Through our unmeasurable woods:
I can no more create, sitting in youthful state
Above the mighty floods,
And peopling glen, and wave, and air,
With shapes that are immortal. Then
The earth and heaven were fair,
While only less than gods seem'd all my fellow-men.
Oh! the delight, the gladness,
The sense yet love of madness,
The glorious choral exultations,
The far-off sounding of the banded nations,
The wings of angels at melodious sweeps
Upon the mountain's hazy steeps,—
The very dead astir within their coffin'd deeps;
The dreamy veil that wrapp'd the star and sod—
A swathe of purple, gold, and amethyst;
And, luminous behind the billowy mist,
Something that look'd to my young eyes like God.
Too late I learn I have not lived aright,
And hence the loss of that delight
Which put a moon into the moonless night
I mingled in the human maze;
I sought their horrid shrine;
I knelt before the impure blaze;
I made their idols mine.
I lost mine early love—that love of balms
Most musical with solemn psalms
Sounding beneath the tall and graceful palms.
Who lives aright?
Answer me, all ye pyramids and piles
That look like calmest power in your still might.
Ye also do I ask, O continents and isles!
Blind though with blood ye be,
Your tongues, though torn with pain, I know are free.
Then speak, all ancient masses! speak
From patient obelisk to idle peak!
There is a heaving of the plains,
A trailing of a shroud,
A clash of bolts and chains—
A low, sad voice, that comes upon me like a cloud,
"Oh, misery, oh, misery!"—
Thou poor old Earth! no more, no more
Shall I draw speech from thee,
Nor dare thy crypts of legendary lore:
Let silence learn no tongue; let night fold every shore.
Yet I have something left—the will,
That Mont Blanc of the soul, is towering still.
And I can bear the pain,
The storm, the old heroic chain;
And with a smile
Pluck wisdom from my torture, and give back
A love to Fate from this my mountain-rack.
I do believe the sad alone are wise;
I do believe the wrong'd alone can know
Why lives the world, why spread the burden'd skies,
And so from torture into godship grow.
Plainer and plainer beams this truth, the more
I hear the slow, dull dripping of my gore;
And now, arising from yon deep,
'Tis plain as a white statue on a tall, dark steep.
Oh, suffering bards! oh spirits black
With storm on many a mountain-rack
Our early splendor's gone.
Like stars into a cloud withdrawn—
Like music laid asleep
In dried-up fountains—like a stricken dawn
Where sudden tempests sweep.
I hear the bolts around us falling,
And cloud to cloud forever calling:
Yet WE must nor despair nor weep.
Did WE this evil bring?
Or from our fellows did the torture spring?
Titans! forgive, forgive!
Oh, know ye not 'tis victory but to live?
Therefore I say, rejoice with harp and voice!
I know not what our fate may be:
I only know that he who hath a time
Must also have eternity:
One billow proves and gives a whole wide sea.
On this I build my trust,
And not on mountain-dust,
Or murmuring woods, or starlit clime,
Or ocean with melodious chime,
Or sunset glories in the western sky:
Enough, I am, and shall not choose to die.
No matter what my future fate may be:
To live is in itself a majesty!
Oh! there I may again create
Fair worlds as in my youthful state;
Or Wo may build for me a fiery tomb
Like Farinata's in the nether gloom:
Even then I will not lose the name of man
By idle moan or coward groan,
But say, "It was so written in the mighty plan!"
The next poem is in a vein of lofty contemplation, and the rhetoric is eminently appropriate and well sustained. It is one of the most striking pieces in the book.