Higher, yet higher, out of fiery mists,
Filling those meadows of the dew-built dawn,
Gloried and glorying, power clutched in my hand,
Wreathed about in terrible splendors, I drave,
Glowing, the dawn’s gold coursers, champing steam
Of snow and pearly foam from golden bridles,
Forged in blue eidolon forges of the night,
Beaten on steely anvils of the stars.
These, champing, reared their fetlocks; breathing flame,
In red, dew-draining lances, thundered on,
’Whelming night, as golden stair by stair
They climbed the glimmering bridgeway of the day.
Far under, wreathed in mists, old ocean swayed;
And, cyclops-like, the bearded mountains hung.
Vast shining rivers with their brimming floors
And broad curved courses gleamed and glanced and shone,
And loneliness and gloom and gray despair
With sombre hauntings fled to shuddering night
Hidden in caves and coral glooms of seas.
Low down the east the morn’s ambrosial meads
Sank in soft splendors. Sphering out below,
Gilded in morning, anchored the patient earth,
Mountain and valley, ocean and wide plain,
Opening to dawn’s young footsteps where we wheeled,
And blossomed wide the rosebud of the day.
Glory was mine, but greater, sense of power,
Nor marred by fear, as loftier we climbed,
With glinting hoofs, that clanged the azure bridge
That arched from dawning up to flaming noon.
Dauntless my soul, and fiery-glad my heart,
And “vastness,” “vastness,” sang through all my being,
As gloved with adamant I guided on
The day’s red coursers up their flaming hill,
To reach the mighty keystone of the day.
All things conspired to build my upward road:
The fitful winds of morning, the soft clouds,
That fleece-like swept my cheek, the azure glint
Of ocean swaying, restless, on his rim,
Where slept the continents like a serpent curled
In sleep, leviathan, huge, about the world.
Then sudden all my waking turned to dream,
A madness wherein, hideous, all things hung.
Thought fled confused, and awful apprehension
Shadowed my spirit, power and reason fled;
And, maddening, day’s red coursers thundered on,
Uncurbed, unguided by my palsied hand.
Then with loud ruin, blundering from the bridge,
Through space went swaying, now high up, now down,
Scattering conflagration and fierce death
O’er earth’s shrunk verges where their scorchings scarred.
Time fled in terror, forests shrivelled up,
Ocean drew back in shudderings to his caves,
Huge mountains shook and rumbled to their base,
Great streams dried up, old cities smoked and fell,
And all life met confusion and despair,
And dread annihilation.
Then the Gods,
Pitying wrecked nature, in their sudden vengeance,
Me, impious, hurled from out my dizzying height.
Time vanished, reason swooned, then left her throne,
And darkness wrapt me as I shuddering fell,
Oblivion-clouded, to the plunging seas.
Ocean received me, folding in her deeps,
Cooling and emerald. Here in coral dreams
I rest and cure me, never wholly waking,
Filled with one splendor, fumbling in a dream,
As waves do fumble all about a cave,
For one clear memory of that one high day.
I failed, was mortal; where I climbed I fell.
But all else little matters; life was mine,
I dreamed, I dared, I grappled with, I fell;
And here I live it over in my dreams.
All things may pass, decline, and come to naught,
Death ’whelm life as day engulfed in dark,
But I have greatly lived, have greatly dared,
And death will never wholly wrap me round
And black me in its terrors. I am made
One with the future, dwelling in the dreams
And memories dread of envious gods and men.
The Humming Bee
Glad music of the summer’s heart,
Jargoning from flower to flower,
A part of each unconscious hour
Until the happy days depart!