Classic Poem

From chaos, with creative hand
And fiery breath and magic wand,
I saw an artizan expand
And mould a crystal earth,
Where Plain and Hill and Sea and Isle
Were blended in the sunny smile
That saw our Planet's birth.

Where trees sprang up, whose foliage, dyed
Unfadingly in Summer's pride,
Rude Autumn's withering breath defied,
And Winter's icy blasts;
And ships, becalmed on wrinkled seas,
Though full their sails, felt not the breeze
That bent their tapering masts.

A city rose upon the shore
And, on its quay, the stevedore
Awaited to unload and store
That spell-bound navy's freight;
While on the scaffold felons stood,
Unhanged above the multitude,
Before the prison gate.

In gardens of ungathered fruit,
Young lovers sat whose tongues were mute,
Nor thrilled its spell the anxious lute
Within the maiden's hands;
They smiled, in bliss without regret,
As only they who feel not yet
The altar's silken strands.

And when the adept's task was done,
I saw the boy for whom was spun
That globe, its beauties, one by one,
With childish ardour greet;
Then clutch it with such eager grip
That mountain, city, tree, and ship
Fell shivered at his feet;

And thought—when down shall shade his chin,
And Fancy mould a world akin
To that bright Earth, unstain'd by sin,
The adept's fingers wrought—
He'll clutch and lose it, as a boy,
The bubbles which he saw with joy
In rainbow meshes caught.

Yet, when his disenchanted eyes
Shall cease to see the mirage rise,
Between him and the desert's skies,
Above the phantom wave,
He'll halt and kneel and cross his hands,—
Nor long the Simoon's shifting sands
Will mark the new-made grave.