How seldom, Friend! a good great man inherits
Honor or wealth, with all his worth and pains!
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits,
If any man obtain that which he merits,
Or any merit that which he obtains.
Reproof
For shame, dear Friend; renounce this canting strain!
What wouldst thou have a good great man obtain?
Place—titles—salary—a gilded chain—
Or throne of corses which his sword has slain?
Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends!
Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The good great man? three treasures,—love and light,
And calm thoughts, regular as infant's breath;
And three firm friends, more sure than day and night—
Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.
TO A GENTLEMAN
Composed on the Night after His Recitation of a Poem On the Growth of an Individual Mind
Friend of the Wise! and Teacher of the Good!
Into my heart have I received that lay
More than historic, that prophetic lay.
Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright)
Of the foundations and the building up
Of a Human Spirit thou hast dared to tell
What may be told, to the understanding mind
Revealable; and what within the mind.
By vital breathings secret as the soul
Of vernal growth, oft quickens in the heart
Thoughts all too deep for words!
Theme hard as high!
Of smiles spontaneous, and mysterious fears,
The first-born they of Reason, and twin-birth;
Of tides obedient to external force,
And currents self-determined, as might seem,
Or by some inner Power; of moments awful.
Now in thy inner life, and now abroad,
When Power stream'd from thee, and thy soul received
The light reflected, as a light bestowed
Of fancies fair, and milder hours of youth.
Hyblean murmurs of poetic thought,
Industrious in its joy, in Vales and Glens
Native or outland, Lakes and famous Hills!
Or on the lonely High-road, when the Stars
Were rising; or by secret mountain Streams.
The Guides and the Companions of thy way!
Of more than Fancy, of the Social Sense
Distending wide, and Man beloved as Man,
Where France in all her town lay vibrating
Like some becalmed bark beneath the burst
Of Heaven's immediate thunder, when no cloud
Is visible, or shadow on the Main.
For thou wert there, thine own brows garlanded,
Amid the tremor of a realm aglow.
Amid a mighty nation jubilant,
When from the general heart of humankind
Hope sprang forth like a full-born Deity!
... Of that dear Hope afflicted and struck down
So summoned homeward, thenceforth calm and sure,
From the dread watch-tower of man's absolute Self
With light unwaning on her eyes, to look
Far on—herself a glory to behold,
The Angel of the vision! Then (last strain)
Of Duty, chosen laws controlling choice,
Action and Joy!—An Orphic song indeed,
A song divine of high and passionate thoughts,
To their own music chanted!
O great Bard!
Ere yet that last strain, dying, awed the air,
With stedfast eye I viewed thee in the choir
Of ever-enduring men. The truly Great
Have all one age, and from one visible space
Shed influence! They, both in power and act,
Are permanent, and Time is not with them,
Save as it worketh for them, they in it.
Nor less a sacred roll than those of old,
And to be placed, as they, with gradual fame
Among the archives of mankind, thy work
Makes audible a linked lay of Truth,
Of Truth profound a sweet continuous lay,
Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes!
Ah! as I listened with a heart forlorn,
The pulses of my being beat anew:
And even as life returns upon the drowned,
Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of pains—
Keen Pangs of Love, awakening as a babe
Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart;
And Fears self-willed that shunned the eye of Hope,
And Hope that scarce would know itself from Fear,
Sense of past Youth; and Manhood come in vain,
And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild,
And all which patient toil had reared, and all,
Commune with thee had opened out—but flowers
Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier,
In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!