CXXXV.
The earth is hoar with many a thousand years,
And many a nation’s mute observance hung
On brighter ministers than woman’s tears,
Immutable still, as when their course begun;
Once large luxuriance fostered giant forms,
Huge sepulchres contain their trampled pride;
Nature, or glutted, or transposed by storms,
Invites man sail o’er Being’s former tide:
Without one tear those calm, clear worlds looked down,
And haply smile at mortals’ eagerness;
They seem to murmur, grasp your bauble crown,
Scan not too near your treasure’s meagreness:
All changes; but one essence guides the change,
Involved, immortal, it must onward range.
CXXXVI.
Types of the volume where all secrets lie,
Who hath not made ye confidants of woe?
Whom have ye cheer’d not, beckoning from on high,
Watched at their birth, and flash’d on death your glow?
Witnesses to my woes, my thoughts, my sins,
Attest, that sometimes I have conquered grief;
If I have known what loss fulfilment wins,
And yet striven on, then yield me some relief:
Thou, blue escutcheon, on which worlds have painted
The symbol, truth, hard for poor man to read;
If I have lonely storm’d content, nor fainted,
Nourish some flower from this uncertain seed:
Though great my sins, not less my griefs have been,
Bear witness, Truth, high arbitress and queen.
CXXXVII.
When man sinks awed, watching a myriad globes,
How shrunk his purpose and his works appear!
All his achievement ne’er can weave such robes;
He can but gaze, despair confounds his fear:
Yet there’s a link that binds weak man to God,
And earth hath heavens as bright as all those stars;
Beauty, ever-living, need but inspire the sod,
And, lo! the substance of those golden cars.
Spirit of Beauty, quicken, purge my soul;
Raise it more near the substance of thy form;
Then, mounting gradual, I shall reach the goal,
Where individual life’s no longer warm;
Where Beauty in itself transpicuous shines,
And, universal, dazzles life’s dim mines.