Who through all he meets can steer him, Can reject what cannot clear him,
Cling to what can truly cheer him ;
Who each day more surely learns
That an impulse, from the distance
Of his deepest, best existence,
To the words, "Hope, Light, Persistence,"
Strongly sets and truly burns.
MIST clogs the sunshine.
Smoky dwarf houses
Hem me round everywhere;
A vague dejection
Weighs down my soul.
Yet, while I languish,
Everywhere countless
Prospects unroll themselves,
And countless beings
Pass countless moods.
Far hence, in Asia,
On the smooth convent-roofs,
On the gold terraces,
Of holy Lassa,
Bright shines the sun.
Gray time-worn marbles
Hold the pure Muses;
In their cool gallery,
By yellow Tiber,
They still look fair.
Strange unloved uproar1
Shrills round their portal;
Yet not on Helicon
Kept they more cloudless
Their noble calm.
Through sun-proof alleys
In a lone, sand-hemmed
City of Africa,
A blind, led beggar,
Age-bowed, asks alms.
No bolder robber
Erst abode ambushed
Deep in the sandy waste;
No clearer eyesight
Spied prey afar.
Saharan sand-winds
Seared his keen eyeballs;
Spent is the spoil he won.
For him the present
Holds only pain.
Two young, fair lovers,
Where the warm June-wind,
Fresh from the summer fields
Plays fondly round them,
Stand, tranced in joy.
With sweet, joined voices,
And with eyes brimming,
"Ah!" they cry, "Destiny,
Prolong the present !
Time, stand still here!"
1 Written during the siege of Rome by the French, 1849.
The prompt stern goddess
Shakes her head, frowning:
Time gives his hour-glass
Its due reversal;
Their hour is gone.
With weak indulgence
Did the just goddess
Lengthen their happiness,
She lengthened also
Distress elsewhere.
The hour whose happy
Unalloyed moments
I would eternalize,
Ten thousand mourners
Well pleased see end.
The bleak, stern hour,
Whose severe moments
I would annihilate,
Is passed by others
In warmth, light, joy.
Time, so complained of,
Who to no one man
Shows partiality,
Brings round to all men
Some undimmed hours.
To die be given us, or attain! Fierce work it were, to do again.
So pilgrims, bound for Mecca, prayed
At burning noon; so warriors said,
Scarfed with the cross, who watched the miles
Of dust which wreathed their struggling files
Down Lydian mountains; so, when snows
Round Alpine summits, eddying, rose,
The Goth, bound Rome-wards; so the Hun,
Crouched on his saddle, while the sun
Went lurid down o'er flooded plains
Through which the groaning Danube strains
To the drear Euxine: so pray all,
Whom labors, self-ordained, inthrall;
Because they to themselves propose
On this side the all-common close
A goal which, gained, may give repose.
So pray they; and to stand again
Where they stood once, to them were pain;
Pain to thread back and to renew
Past straits, and currents long steered through.
But milder natures, and more free,
Whom an unblamed serenity
Hath freed from passions, and the state
Of struggle these necessitate;
Whom schooling of the stubborn mind
Hath made, or birth hath found, resigned,
These mourn not, that their goings pay
Obedience to the passing day.
These claim not every laughing hour
For handmaid to their striding power ;
Each in her turn, with torch upreared,
To await their march; and when appeared,
Through the cold gloom, with measured race,
To usher for a destined space
(Her own sweet errands all foregone) The too imperious traveller on.
These, Fausta, ask not this; nor thou, Time's chafing prisoner, ask it now!
We left just ten years since, you say,
That wayside inn we left to-day.
Our jovial host, as forth we fare,
Shouts greeting from his easy-chair.
High on a bank our leader stands,
Reviews and ranks his motley bands,
Makes clear our goal to every eye,
The valley's western boundary.
A gate swings to! our tide hath flowed
Already from the silent road.
The valley-pastures, one by one,
Are threaded, quiet in the sun;
And now, beyond the rude stone bridge,
Slopes gracious up the western ridge.
Its woody border, and the last
Of its dark upland farms, is past;
Cool farms, with open-lying stores,
Under their burnished sycamores, ·
All past! and through the trees we glide
Emerging on the green hillside.
There climbing hangs, a far-seen sign,
Our wavering, many-colored line;
There winds, up-streaming slowly still
Over the summit of the hill.
And now, in front, behold outspread
Those upper regions we must tread, -
Mild hollows, and clear heathy swells,
The cheerful silence of the fells.
|