Classic Poem

A LAS ! in what a ceaseless maze
Of errors, and of darksome ways,
The human mind, poor wanderer,
Goes grave and toiling, here and there;
And in its OEdipœan plight,
Feeling round through depths of night,
Carries a blind brooding face
Over its thoughts' most empty space!
And yet by these its piteous roads
'Twould judge the ways of the great Gods.
And a law and reason vaunt
Like their carved adamant;
And to its little fleeting hours
Tie up Time's own conquerors

And shall great Nature's face then grow
Old, and have a furrowed brow?
Shall her all-producing womb
Dry up in the common doom?
Shall she own she's old indeed,
And tottering, shake her starry head?
Must foul corruption, and the fell
Hunger of years insatiable,
And squalid ills, and thirsts, and cares
Trouble the rejoicing stars?
…

Alas! and could not the wise force
Of Jove secure his chrystal towers?
Exempt his spheres from earthly wounds,
And bid them take immortal rounds?
Say, shall it be, that some dread day
Those marble vaults shall burst away,
And dashing as through the mad air,
Drown the deafened poles with fear;
Bringing the Olympian from his throne
With his bewildered thunders down,
And Pallas, glaring as she comes,
With the bared Gorgonian dooms?
Worse fall, and mightier ruin far,
Than the swart Vulcanian star.
Thou, Phœbus, shall thy lofty state
Follow thy son's rebuked fate,
Smitten headlong suddenly
With thy lamp into the sea,
Which shall hiss with the quenched light,
And fume against the tawny night;
Hæmus then, with smouldered heart,
With its tops shall leap apart;
And the Acroceraunian frown
Slide with all its thunders down
Through the roof of shaken Dis,
Bringing him the artilleries
With which he wont to scale the stars,
And wage his old fraternal wars.

But the Almighty Sire has given
Surer heart to his starred heaven,
And pondering on the sum of things,
Looked through all their balancings,
Bidding them for aye to be
Of a stern sweet harmony.
Therefore the first wheels of day
Still repeat their roundest way,
And about heaven's charmed ears
Carry the smooth glassy spheres.
Saturn, in his sullen hold,
Is not slower than of old:
Crested Mars with fiery eye
Reddens in his perturbed sky;
And Phœbus, with his florid mouth,
Sparkles everlasting youth
…

He rises ever, as he did,
Beauteous from his Eastern bed,
Early calling up his team
That issues with a whitening beam,
And loosening it as late at even
Into the quiet meads of heaven
With his double colour, he
Divides the day-time equally;
And then his sister comes again,
Now to wax, and now to wane,
And with arms in a like space
Holds the blue in her embrace.
…
Fair Earth, nor has the old potency
Taken his fruitful arms from thee;
Narcissus, drooping on his rill,
Keeps his odorous beauty still;
And so does either boy divine,
Phœbus, thy boy,—and Venus, thine.