Poems - Household Edition | Page 7

operation,?Hath its unit, bound and metre;?And every new compound?Is some product and repeater,--?Product of the earlier found.?But the unit of the visit,?The encounter of the wise,--?Say, what other metre is it?Than the meeting of the eyes??Nature poureth into nature?Through the channels of that feature,?Riding on the ray of sight,?Fleeter far than whirlwinds go,?Or for service, or delight,?Hearts to hearts their meaning show,?Sum their long experience,?And import intelligence.?Single look has drained the breast;?Single moment years confessed.?The duration of a glance?Is the term of convenance,?And, though thy rede be church or state,?Frugal multiples of that.?Speeding Saturn cannot halt;?Linger,--thou shalt rue the fault:?If Love his moment overstay,?Hatred's swift repulsions play.
URIEL
It fell in the ancient periods?Which the brooding soul surveys,?Or ever the wild Time coined itself?Into calendar months and days.
This was the lapse of Uriel,?Which in Paradise befell.?Once, among the Pleiads walking,?Seyd overheard the young gods talking;?And the treason, too long pent,?To his ears was evident.?The young deities discussed?Laws of form, and metre just,?Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams,?What subsisteth, and what seems.?One, with low tones that decide,?And doubt and reverend use defied,?With a look that solved the sphere,?And stirred the devils everywhere,?Gave his sentiment divine?Against the being of a line.?'Line in nature is not found;?Unit and universe are round;?In vain produced, all rays return;?Evil will bless, and ice will burn.'?As Uriel spoke with piercing eye,?A shudder ran around the sky;?The stern old war-gods shook their heads,?The seraphs frowned from myrtle-beds;?Seemed to the holy festival?The rash word boded ill to all;?The balance-beam of Fate was bent;?The bounds of good and ill were rent;?Strong Hades could not keep his own,?But all slid to confusion.
A sad self-knowledge, withering, fell?On the beauty of Uriel;?In heaven once eminent, the god?Withdrew, that hour, into his cloud;?Whether doomed to long gyration?In the sea of generation,?Or by knowledge grown too bright?To hit the nerve of feebler sight.?Straightway, a forgetting wind?Stole over the celestial kind,?And their lips the secret kept,?If in ashes the fire-seed slept.?But now and then, truth-speaking things?Shamed the angels' veiling wings;?And, shrilling from the solar course,?Or from fruit of chemic force,?Procession of a soul in matter,?Or the speeding change of water,?Or out of the good of evil born,?Came Uriel's voice of cherub scorn,?And a blush tinged the upper sky,?And the gods shook, they knew not why.
THE WORLD-SOUL
Thanks to the morning light,?Thanks to the foaming sea,?To the uplands of New Hampshire,?To the green-haired forest free;?Thanks to each man of courage,?To the maids of holy mind,?To the boy with his games undaunted?Who never looks behind.
Cities of proud hotels,?Houses of rich and great,?Vice nestles in your chambers,?Beneath your roofs of slate.?It cannot conquer folly,--?Time-and-space-conquering steam,--?And the light-outspeeding telegraph?Bears nothing on its beam.
The politics are base;?The letters do not cheer;?And 'tis far in the deeps of history,?The voice that speaketh clear.?Trade and the streets ensnare us,?Our bodies are weak and worn;?We plot and corrupt each other,?And we despoil the unborn.
Yet there in the parlor sits?Some figure of noble guise,--?Our angel, in a stranger's form,?Or woman's pleading eyes;?Or only a flashing sunbeam?In at the window-pane;?Or Music pours on mortals?Its beautiful disdain.
The inevitable morning?Finds them who in cellars be;?And be sure the all-loving Nature?Will smile in a factory.?Yon ridge of purple landscape,?Yon sky between the walls,?Hold all the hidden wonders?In scanty intervals.
Alas! the Sprite that haunts us?Deceives our rash desire;?It whispers of the glorious gods,?And leaves us in the mire.?We cannot learn the cipher?That's writ upon our cell;?Stars taunt us by a mystery?Which we could never spell.
If but one hero knew it,?The world would blush in flame;?The sage, till he hit the secret,?Would hang his head for shame.?Our brothers have not read it,?Not one has found the key;?And henceforth we are comforted,--?We are but such as they.
Still, still the secret presses;?The nearing clouds draw down;?The crimson morning flames into?The fopperies of the town.?Within, without the idle earth,?Stars weave eternal rings;?The sun himself shines heartily,?And shares the joy he brings.
And what if Trade sow cities?Like shells along the shore,?And thatch with towns the prairie broad?With railways ironed o'er?--?They are but sailing foam-bells?Along Thought's causing stream,?And take their shape and sun-color?From him that sends the dream.
For Destiny never swerves?Nor yields to men the helm;?He shoots his thought, by hidden nerves,?Throughout the solid realm.?The patient Daemon sits,?With roses and a shroud;?He has his way, and deals his gifts,--?But ours is not allowed.
He is no churl nor trifler,?And his viceroy is none,--?Love-without-weakness,--?Of Genius sire and son.?And his will is not thwarted;?The seeds of land and sea?Are the atoms of his body bright,?And his behest obey.
He serveth the servant,?The brave he loves amain;?He kills the cripple and the sick,?And straight begins again;?For gods delight in gods,?And thrust the weak aside;?To him who scorns their charities?Their arms fly open wide.
When the old world is sterile?And the ages are effete,?He will from wrecks and sediment?The fairer world complete.?He forbids to despair;?His cheeks mantle with