Only for the vault to leave thee,
Only with my life to lose;
Let my closing eyes perceive thee,
Fold thy wings amid the yews.
MIND AND SOUL.
Hark! the awe-whisperd'd prayer, "God spare my mind!"
Dust unto dust, the mortal to the clod;
But the high place, the altar that has shrined
Thine image,—spare, O God!
Thought, the grand link from human life to Thee,
The humble reed that by the Shadowy River
Responds in music to the melody
Of spheres that hymn for ever,—
The order of the mystic world within,
The airy girth of all things near and far;
Sense, though of sorrow,—memory, though of sin,—
Gleams through the dungeon bar,—
Vouchsafe me to the last!—Though none may mark
The solemn pang, nor soothe the parting breath,
Still let me seek for God amid the dark,
And face, unblinded, Death!
Whence is this fine distinction twixt the twain
Rays of the Maker in the lamp of clay
Spirit and Mind?—strike the material brain,
And soul seems hurl'd away.
Touch but a nerve, and Brutus is a slave;
A nerve, and Plato drivels! Was it mind,
Or soul, that taught the wise one in the cave,
The freeman in the wind?
If mind—O Soul! what is thy task on earth?
If soul! O wherefore can a touch destroy,
Or lock in Lethé's Acherontian dearth,
The Immortal's grief and joy?