Truth taught me more, but bade me silent be; 220
And I had teachers else—toil, prayer, and pain,
With days and nights of misery's martyrdom,
Alone and lorn in grief's Gethsemane:
Till storm above, and earthquake underneath,
Shook down thought's prison house, broke bolt and bar,
And agony set inspiration free.
'Tis thus the Great Musician tunes the harp
That He would strike—strikes thus the harp in tune;
Sweeping with sorrow's hand the quivering strings,
That they may cry aloud, and haply sound 230
A loftier and more enduring lay.
CANTO TWO
The Soul of Song[1]
Alone my soul upon a mighty hill,
Ancient with lingering snows of vanished years,
Where towering forms the templed azure fill,
Wooed by the breath of woodland atmospheres;
Where Nature, throned in solitude, reveres
The God whose glory she doth symbolize,
And on these altars, watered by her tears,
Spreads far around the fragrant sacrifice
Whose incense wafts her sweet memorial to the skies. 240
Here will I rest, where I have loved to roam,
From childhood's rose-hued, scarce-remembered day,
And found my pensive soul's congenial home
Far from the depths where human passions play.
Born at their feet, my own have learned to stray
Familiar o'er these pathless heights, and feel,
As now, the mind assume a loftier sway,
Soaring for themes that o'er its summits steal,
Beyond all thought to reach, all utterance to reveal.
Here let me linger. O my native hills! 250
Solemn and watchful o'er the silent waste!
How great the joy his bounding bosom thrills,
Whose steps, aspiring, mar your summits chaste!
Language! thy richest robe, thy rarest taste,
How clothe description in befitting dress,
When halts imagination's wingéd haste,
Awe-spelled in wonder's conscious littleness,
Where loom the cloud-crowned monarchs of the wilderness?
Grim, storm-plumed guardians! Warriors tempest-mailed,
Federal with freedom, fortressing her land! 260
Had primal man the sacred garden[2] tilled,
'Ere earthly scenes your early vision scanned?
In spirit form took ye your titan stand[3],
Ere rolled a world-creating fiat forth?
Or came ye at convulsion's fierce command,
'Mid loud-tongued thunders bursting from the earth,
The martial music that proclaimed your war-like birth?
Vast, voiceless oracles, whose intelligence
Sleeps in the caverns of each stony heart,
Yet breathes o'er all a boundless eloquence, 270
What wealth historic might your words impart!
Lone, looming, hermit of the hills, apart
From where thy banded mates in union dwell!
A master lyrist seemingly thou art,
Chief harper of a host that round thee swell;
And thine the Orphean boon[4], what could withstand thy spell?
E'en now it whispers from the graven rock,
Scribed with the lightning's pen, in sculpture bold,
Defying time and tide and tempest shock,
Frowning where seas and centuries have rolled. 280
"Oh were my words[5] thus writ!" That sage of old,
Knew he not well, ye mighty tomes of clay,
How firm the trust your flinty page might hold?
Have ye not scorned the fiats of decay?
Are ye not standing now where nations passed away?