Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure | Page 4

remnant legend runs:?"Nascitur omnis homo peccato mortuus?Una post cineres virtus vivere sola facit."[A]
There as I breathed the lesson of the dead:?Sudden the rich bells chorussed overhead:?"O be not of the throng ephemeral?To whom to-day is fame, to-morrow fate,?Proud of some robe no statelier than a pall,?Mad for some wreath of cypress funeral--?A phantom generation fatuate.?Stand thou aside and stretch a hand to save,?Virtue alone revives beyond the grave."
[Footnote A: "Every man is born dead in sin. Virtue alone brings life eternal."]
STANCHEZZA.
EARLY LINES
Lo Zephyr floats, on pinions delicate,?Past the dark belfry, where a deep-toned bell?Sways back and forth, Grief tolling out the knell
For thee, my friend, so young and yet so great.?Dead--thou art dead. The destiny of men?Is ever thus, like waves upon the main?To rise, grow great, fall with a crash and wane,
While still another grows to wane again,?Dead--thou art dead. Would that I too were gone?And that the grass which rustles on thy grave?Might also over mine forever wave
Made living by the death it grew upon.?I ask not Orpheus-like, that Pluto give?Thy soul to earth. I would not have thee live.
PR?TERITA EX INSTANTIBUS.
How strange it is that, in the after age,--
When Time's clepsydra will be nearer dry--?That all the accustomed things we now pass by?Unmarked, because familiar, shall engage?The antique reverence of men to be;
And that quaint interest which prompts the sage?The silent fathoms of the past to gauge?Shall keep alive our own past memory,?Making all great of ours--the garb we wear--
Our voiceless cities, reft of roof and spire--?The very skull whence now the eye of fire?Glances bright sign of what the soul can dare.?So shall our annals make an envied lore,?And men will say, 'Thus did the men of yore.'
SUNRISE.
EARLY LINES
I saw the shining-limbed Apollo stand,
Exultant, on the rim of Orient,?And well and mightily his bow he bent,?And unseen-swift the arrow left his hand.?Far on it sped, as did those elder ones?That long ago shed plague upon the Greek--?Far on--and pierced the side of Night, who weak?And out of breath with fright, fled to his sons,?The nether ghosts; and lo! his jewelled robe?No more did shade a sleep-encircled world;?And thereupon the fa?ry legions furled?The silk of silence, and the wheeling globe?Spun freer on its grand, accustomed way,?While all things living rose to hail the day.
REALITY.
A FANCY
Fade lesser dreams, that, built of tenderness,?Young trust and tinted hopes, have led me long.?These jagged ways ye whiled will pain me less?Than hath your falsity. Your spirit song?Sent magic wafted up and down along?The waves of wind to me. Your world was real.?There was no ruder world that I could feel.?I lived in dreams and thought you all I would,?Nor knew what dread, bare truth is doomed to rise,?When love and hope and all but one far Good,?Like sunset lands feel the cold night of lies.
Go, sweetest visions, die amid my tears,?For hence, nor cheered, nor blinded, must I seek?That larger dream that cannot fade; though years?Of leaden days and leagues of by-path bleak?Must intervene, with austere sadness gray,?Fade dimmer! lest in agony I turn,?And heartsick seek ye, though the Fates shriek "Nay!"?And the wroth heavens with judgment lightnings burn.
Go useless lesser dreams. And where they were,?Rise, grave a?rial Good! Thy texture's true.?There is no good can die. "No ill," says Time, "can bear,?However beautiful, my long, long earnest view."
SEARCHINGS.
(EARLY LINES.)
Soul, thou hast lived before. Thy wing?Hath swept the ancient folds of light?Which once wrapt stilly everything,?Before the advent of a Night.
O thou art blind and thou art dead?Unto the knowledge that was thine.?A longing and a dreamy dread?Alone oft shadow the divine.
Full loud calls past eternity,?But Lethe's murmur stills its roar,?The one vague truth that reaches thee?Is this--that thou hast lived before.
Home often comes some voice of eld?Confused and low--a broken surge?By fate and distance half withheld--?Rich in linked sadness like a dirge.
The muffled, great bell Silence clangs?His solemn call, and thou, O soul!?Dost stir in sense's torpid fangs,?Like the blind magnet, toward a pole.
The deep, vast, swelling organ-sound;?The cadence of an evening flute,?Bring oft those ancient joys around?To linger till the notes are mute.
And when thy hushéd breathing fills?The shrine of quiet reverence,?Then, too, a freeing angel stills?The clanking of the chains of sense.
But nearest to that former life?Another power calleth thee,?Away from care, away from strife,?Toward what thou wast--infinity.
And in thee, soul, the deepest chord?Thrills to a strain rung from above;?That strain is bound within a word,?A sole, sweet word, and it is--Love.
Love--yet it cannot set thee free?To sweep again those folds of light,?It torches but a part to thee?And dim, though fair. The rest is night.
As the fine structure of a man?Fits into life's great world, foremade,?So too it shadoweth the plan?Of ages hidden in the shade.
And thou hast lived before; hast known?The depth of every mystery,?Has dwelt in Nature, hid, alone?And winged the blue ?therial sea;
Hast looked