And while they try to stem The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest, Death in their prison reaches them, Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest. And the rest, a few, Escape their prison, and depart On the wide ocean of life anew. There the freed prisoner, where'er his heart Listeth, will sail; Nor doth he know how there prevail, Despotic on that sea, Trade-winds which cross it from eternity. Awhile he holds some false way, undebarred By thwarting signs, and braves The freshening wind and blackening waves. And then the tempest strikes him; and between Only a driving wreck, And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck With anguished face and flying hair, Grasping the rudder hard, Still bent to make some port, he knows not where, Still standing for some false, impossible shore. And sterner comes the roar Of sea and wind; and through the deepening gloom Is there no life, but these alone? Madman or slave, must man be one? Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain! Ye heavens, whose pure dark regions have no sign Of languor, though so calm, and though so great Who, though so noble, share in the world's toil, And, though so tasked, keep free from dust and soil! Who have longed deeply once, and longed in vain ; A world above man's head, to let him see How boundless might his soul's horizons be, How it were good to live there, and breathe free; Is left to each man still! THE BURIED LIFE. LIGHT flows our war of mocking words; and yet, And turn those limpid eyes on mine, And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul. Alas! is even love too weak To unlock the heart, and let it speak? Are even lovers powerless to reveal I knew the mass of men concealed Their thoughts, for fear that if revealed With blank indifference, or with blame reproved; Tricked in disguises, alien to the rest Of men, and alien to themselves — and yet But we, my love! doth a like spell benumb Ah! well for us, if even we, Even for a moment, can get free Our heart, and have our lips unchained; For that which seals them hath been deep-ordained! Fate, which foresaw How frivolous a baby man would be, Pursue with indiscernible flow its way; And that we should not see The buried stream, and seem to be But often, in the world's most crowded streets, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force Into the mystery of this heart which beats Whence our lives come, and where they go. And we have been on many thousand lines, But hardly have we, for one little hour, Been on our own line, have we been ourselves, Hardly had skill to utter one of all The nameless feelings that course through our breast, And long we try in vain to speak and act Of all the thousand nothings of the hour Ah, yes, and they benumb us at our call! Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn, As from an infinitely distant land, Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey When a beloved hand is laid in ours, Of the interminable hours, Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, Is by the tones of a loved voice caressed, A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know. A man becomes aware of his life's flow, And hears its winding murmur, and he sees The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. And there arrives a lull in the hot race Wherein he doth forever chase The flying and elusive shadow, rest. An air of coolness plays upon his face, And an unwonted calm pervades his breast; And then he thinks he knows The hills where his life rose, And the sea where it goes. LINES WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS. In this lone, open glade I lie, Screened by deep boughs on either hand; And at its end, to stay the eye, Those black-crowned, red-boled pine-trees stand. Birds here make song, each bird has his, Across the girdling city's hum. How green under the boughs it is! How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come! |