INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL
A thought, to lift me up to those
Sweet wildflowers of the pensive woods;
The lofty, lowly attitudes
Of bluet and of bramble-rose:
To lift me where my mind may reach
The lessons which their beauties teach.
A dream, to lead my spirit on
With sounds of fairy shawms and flutes,
And all mysterious attributes
Of skies of dusk and skies of dawn:
To lead me, like the wandering brooks,
Past all the knowledge of the books.
A song, to make my heart a guest
Of happiness whose soul is love;
One with the life that knoweth of
But song that turneth toil to rest:
To make me cousin to the birds,
Whose music needs not wisdom’s words.
I
Shall I forget, and yet behold
How Earth hath said its secret,—to
The violet’s appealing blue,—
Of fragrance; old as Earth is old,
The knowledge that is never told?
Shall I behold and yet forget,
The soft blue of the heaven fell,
Between the dusk and dawn, to tell
Its purpose, to the violet,
Of beauty none hath fathomed yet?
Between the Earth and Heav’n, above,
The wind goes singing all day long;
And he who listens to its song
May catch an instant’s meaning of
The end of life, the end of love.
II
The gods of Greece are mine once more!
The old philosophies again!
For I have drunk the hellebore
Of dreams, and dreams have made me sane—
The wine of dreams! that doth unfold
My other self,—’mid shadowy shrines
Of myths which marble held of old,
Part of the Age of Bronze or Gold,—
That lives, a pagan, ’mid the pines.