Classic Poem

As sleeps the Æolian harp, but wakes
Touched by the fingers of the wind,
So nature her weird music makes
Only as breathed on by the mind.

The artist fingers of the sea
Beat out their music on the shore, —
A pensive, far-off melody, —
Or smite the keys with crash and roar.

But pensive sigh and thunder deep
Are in the ears that hear alone:
They absent, sound falls off asleep,
And voiceless Motion has no tone.

The rose-tint, or the colors fair
Of rainbow, or the surf's white gleam,
If no eye sees, are less than air,
The viewless fancies of a dream.

'Tis this strange consciousness that hears;
'Tis this, and this alone, that sees,
Man is an organ: eyes and ears,
On which the world plays, are his keys.

The music is not in the touch
Whose fingers run the key-board o'er:
This only motion, such or such, —
Motion alone, and nothing more.

If no ear hears, the motion's all:
The endless motion still may play,
But sounds must into silence fall
When those who listen go away.

Bend low before the mystery!
Man's world lives only in man's thought:
The wondrous things we hear and see
Are in his loom of fancy wrought.

Does naught exist, then, save the mind?
Nay, not that only. Some grand Power
Does endless links of life unwind,
Creating all things every hour.

While, in the mind's alembic, these —
Motions of earth and sea and air —
Are changed to finest harmonies,
Or clothed in forms of beauty rare.