Classic Poem

How best doth vision come
To the poet's mind,—
Lonely beneath the blue, unclouded dome,
Or battling with the mighty ocean-wind;
In fair spring mornings, with the soaring lark,
Or amid roaring midnight forests dark?

Shall he attune his voice
To sweetest song,
When earth and sea and sky alike rejoice,
And men are blest, and think no thought of wrong,
In some ideal heaven, some happy isle,
Where life is stiffened to a changeless smile?

Or best amid the noise
Of high designs,
Loud onsets, shatterings, awful battle-joys,
Wherefor the loftier spirit longs and pines;
Or by the depths of Thought's unfathomed sea;
Or to loud thunders of the Dawn to be?

Nature is less than naught
In smile or frown,
But for the formless, underlying thought
Of mind and purpose greater than our own;
This only can these empty shows inform,
Smiles through the calm, and animates the storm.

Nor 'mid the clang and rush
Of mightier thought,
The steeps, the snows, the gulfs, that whelm and crush
The seeker with the treasure he has sought;
Too vast, too swift, too formless to inspire
The fictive hand, or touch the lips with fire.

Rather amid the throng
Of toiling men
He finds the food and sustenance of song,
Spread by hidden hands, again, and yet again,
Where'er he goes, by crowded city street,
He fares thro' springing fancies sad and sweet.

Some innocent baby smile;
A close-wound waist;
Fathers and children; things of shame and guile;
Dim eyes, and lips at parting kissed in haste;
The halt, the blind, the prosperous thing of ill;
The thief, the wanton, touch and vex him still.

Or if sometimes he turn
With a new thrill,
And strives to paint anew with words that burn
The inner thought of sea, or sky, or hill:
It is because a breath of human life
Has touched them: joy and suffering, rest and strife.

And he sees mysteries
Above, around,
Fair spiritual fleeting agencies
Haunting each foot of consecrated ground:
And so, these fading, raises bolder eyes
Beyond the further limits of the skies,

And every thought and word,
And all things seen,
And every passion which his heart has stirred,
And every joy and sorrow which has been,
And every step of life his feet have trod,
Lead by broad stairs of glory up to God.