ODE TO HAPPINESS.
I.
Spirit, that rarely comest now,
And only to contrast my gloom,
Like rainbow-feathered birds that bloom
A moment on some autumn bough
Which, with the spurn of their farewell,
Sheds its last leaves,—thou once didst dwell
With me year-long, and make intense
To boyhood's wisely-vacant days
That fleet, but all-sufficing grace
Of trustful inexperience,
While yet the soul transfigured sense,
And thrilled, as with love's first caress,
At life's mere unexpectedness.
II.
Those were thy days, blithe spirit, those
When a June sunshine could fill up
The chalice of a buttercup
With such Falernian juice as flows
No longer,—for the vine is dead
Whence that inspiring drop was shed:
Days when my blood would leap and run,
As full of morning as a breeze,
Or spray tossed up by summer seas
That doubts if it be sea or sun;
Days that flew swiftly, like the band
That in the Grecian games had strife
And passed from eager hand to hand
The onward-dancing torch of life.
III.
Wing-footed! thou abid'st with him
Who asks it not; but he who hath
Watched o'er the waves thy fading path
Shall nevermore on ocean's rim,
At morn or eve, behold returning
Thy high-heaped canvas shoreward yearning!
Thou first reveal'st to us thy face
Turned o'er the shoulder's parting grace,
A moment glimpsed, then seen no more,—
Thou whose swift footsteps we can trace
Away from every mortal door!
IV.
Nymph of the unreturning feet,
How may I woo thee back? But no,
I do thee wrong to call thee so;
'Tis we are changed, not thou art fleet:
The man thy presence feels again
Not in the blood, but in the brain,
Spirit, that lov'st the upper air,
Serene and vaporless and rare,
Such as on mountain-heights we find
And wide-viewed uplands of the mind,
Or such as scorns to coil and sing
Round any but the eagle's wing
Of souls that with long upward beat
Have won an undisturbed retreat,
Where, poised like wingèd victories,
They mirror in unflinching eyes
The life broad-basking 'neath their feet,—
Man always with his Now at strife,
Pained with first gasps of earthly air,
Then begging Death the last to spare,
Still fearful of the ampler life.