Chief of song where poets feast
144 lines✦
Eolian harp,How strangely wise thy strain!Gay for youth, gay for youth,(Sweet is art, but sweeter truth,)In the hall at summer eveFate and Beauty skilled to weave.From the eager opening stringsRung loud and bold the song.Who but loved the wind-harp's note?How should not the poet doatOn its mystic tongue,With its primeval memory,Reporting what old minstrels saidOf Merlin locked the harp within,--Merlin paying the pain of sin,Pent in a dungeon made of air,--And some attain his voice to hear,Words of pain and cries of fear,But pillowed all on melody,As fits the griefs of bards to be.And what if that all-echoing shell,Which thus the buried Past can tell,Should rive the Future, and revealWhat his dread folds would fain conceal?It shares the secret of the earth,And of the kinds that owe her birth.Speaks not of self that mystic tone,But of the Overgods alone:It trembles to the cosmic breath,--As it heareth, so it saith;Obeying meek the primal Cause,It is the tongue of mundane laws:And this, at least, I dare affirm,Since genius too has bound and term,There is no bard in all the choir,Not Homer's self, the poet sire,Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure,Or Shakspeare, whom no mind can measure,Nor Collins' verse of tender pain,Nor Byron's clarion of disdain,Scott, the delight of generous boys,Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording voice,--Not one of all can put in verse,Or to this presence could rehearse,The sights and voices ravishingThe boy knew on the hills in Spring,When pacing through the oaks he heardSharp queries of the sentry-bird,The heavy grouse's sudden whirr,The rattle of the kingfisher;Saw bonfires of the harlot fliesIn the lowland, when day dies;Or marked, benighted and forlorn,The first far signal-fire of morn.These syllables that Nature spoke,And the thoughts that in him woke,Can adequately utter noneSave to his ear the wind-harp lone.And best can teach its Delphian chordHow Nature to the soul is moored,If once again that silent string,As erst it wont, would thrill and ring. Not long ago, at eventide,It seemed, so listening, at my sideA window rose, and, to say sooth,I looked forth on the fields of youth:I saw fair boys bestriding steeds,I knew their forms in fancy weeds,Long, long concealed by sundering fates,Mates of my youth,--yet not my mates,Stronger and bolder far than I,With grace, with genius, well attired,And then as now from far admired,Followed with loveThey knew not of,With passion cold and shy.O joy, for what recoveries rare!Renewed, I breathe Elysian air,See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom,--Break not my dream, obtrusive tomb!Or teach thou, Spring! the grand recoilOf life resurgent from the soilWherein was dropped the mortal spoil. Soft on the south-wind sleeps the haze!So on thy broad mystic vanLie the opal-coloured days,And waft the miracle to man.Soothsayer of the eldest gods,Repairer of what harms betide,Revealer of the inmost powersPrometheus proffered, Jove denied;Disclosing treasures more than true,Or in what far to-morrow due;Speaking by the tongues of flowers,By the ten-tongued laurel speaking,Singing by the oriole songs,Heart of bird the man's heart seeking;Whispering hints of treasure hidUnder Morn's unlifted lid,Islands looming just beyondThe dim horizon's utmost bound;--Who can, like thee, our rags upbraid,Or taunt us with our hope decayed?Or who like thee persuade,Making the splendour of the air,The morn and sparkling dew, a snare?Or who resentThy genius, wiles, and blandishment? There is no orator prevailsTo beckon or persuadeLike thee the youth or maid:Thy birds, thy songs, thy brooks, thy gales,Thy blooms, thy kinds,Thy echoes in the wilderness,Soothe pain, and age, and love's distress,Fire fainting will, and build heroic minds. For thou, O Spring! canst renovateAll that high God did first create.Be still his arm and architect,Rebuild the ruin, mend defect;Chemist to vamp old worlds with new,Coat sea and sky with heavenlier blue,New-tint the plumage of the birds,And slough decay from grazing herds,Sweep ruins from the scarped mountain,Cleanse the torrent at the fountain,Purge alpine air by towns defiled,Bring to fair mother fairer child,Not less renew the heart and brain,Scatter the sloth, wash out the stain,Make the aged eye sun-clear,To parting soul bring grandeur near.Under gentle types, my SpringMasks the might of Nature's king,An energy that searches thoroughFrom Chaos to the dawning morrow;Into all our human plight,The soul's pilgrimage and flight;In city or in solitude,Step by step, lifts bad to good,Without halting, without rest,Lifting Better up to Best;Planting seeds of knowledge pure,Through earth to ripen, through heaven endure.
✦