Classic Poem

“I WILL follow thee, follow thee, follow thee,
With the god-speed of Endeavor;
Till thou wholly yieldest up to me
The elixir and the ecstasy
Of thy Love and thine Immortality,
And crownest me forever!”

And the Poet sped, sped, sped,
To the foot of the Heavenly Mountain,
With the Sunshine's prance and the Lightning's tread;
And the sword-flash of his Soul smote dead
The terrible Dragon The Beautiful bred
To guard her Sacred Fountain!

To the Bath—whence even the gods are kept
For ever and ever banished,—
In the passionate speed of his soul he swept;
But into the Fountain the Goddess leaped,
And mingled and mounted, and smiled and wept,
In a rainbow as she vanished!

“But ho! by the gods,” he cried and lo,
And into the Bath he bounded!
And flinging his mantle off into the flow,
Rose pure, and swift and pure—ho! ho!—
As a shaft of light from the beautiful Bow,
Into the clouds he mounted

Into the clouds—ho! ho!—
And into her bower he darted;
But the clouds dissolved with a golden glow,
That gilded the Mountain's crown below;
And the rain fell blossoming into snow,
And The Beautiful had departed.

Had slid, slid up, with a sunbeam's sleight,
And with the sunbeams blended,—
Had glided up like the light of light,
Through the misty abysses of Death and Night,
To the Fountain-head of Divine Delight,
And into the sun ascended!

But swifter than all that darts or gleams,
Was the Poet's rapt endeavor;
And up from the world, and its cloudy schemes,
He flashed to the Sun in his deathless dreams;
And The Beautiful crowned him with the beams
Of her Glory and Love forever!