Classic Poem

Apollo ( continuing ).

Voyage after voyage, how else, how else
Should I Man's soul prepare
For the new venture, bolder yet.
On which he now must dare?

See! from the voyage whence you come now
You come not back the same!
Behind the door of your dull brow
Have sprung up doubt and blame —

Defiance of me. That I praise.
This once low-cabined pate
Hollows deep-chambered — is become
Tribunal — hall of state
For the assembled thrones of angels — roof
For an assize of fate!

Thou hast forgotten, whom I took
From lap of things inform
And flung to embraces of the sea
Caresses of the storm!
Now electrified, subtler-energied,
Starker-willed, battle-warm,
Thou comest, thou comest again to me! ...
Son of tumult, gloom enorm,
I have new jeopardy for thee
And new eyes yet to form!

O wrestler into consciousness
Stand upon Earth! Away!
Long hath the journey been by night,
But roseate breaks the day;
Like a scroll I unfold the mountain-tops
And the windings of the bay.

Awake! Already on the cruise
Thou shalt not see its end.
Earth is the ship! Thou shalt have time
To find the Earth thy friend!

Seaman.

Is there a hand upon her helm?

Apollo.

Weigh thou thine own heart-fires,
Her wash of overwhelming dawns,
Her tide that never tires —
Her tranquil heave of seasons — flowers —
All that in thee aspires!

How like an eagle on the abyss
With outspread wing serene
She circles! — thought rolls under her,
The flash from the unseen.
Here's to her mission, winged rock,
Bluff-bowed and heavy keel'd
Through the night-watches swinging on
Still under orders sealed!

No crystal gives a peep, my son,
Of her errand far and surgy;
No witch's magic brew of sleep,
Nor smoke of thaumaturgy;

But if thy former priestly ship
Failed of the port assigned,
The overwhelming globe takes on
Her altar-flame of mind.
See that the oils that feed the lamp
Fail not!

Seaman.

What are those oils?

Apollo.

Heroic, warm, abounding souls!
These are the sacred oils
On fragrant thin-flamed thymele
Lost on the deep like melody —
They who, as I My Self disperse
In them through the tragic universe,
Scatter themselves in toils.

And I shall stream into their life
Waking — sense after sense —
New understandings — endless, no,
But more and more intense.
Till joy in the Will that wafts the world
Buoyant as swimmers be
Makes thee divine, perhaps at last
Wholly delivers thee.

Seaman.

The man exclaimed, " Delivers me!
How, if this death descends?
I am a man and not a race.
What matters, if self ends?
Speak! quick, my brain is worn and cold,
Little it comprehends. "

Apollo.

" I shall tell thee, but as music tells. ...
I too, like thee, have striven.
I too am launched from the profound
And past; I too am driven
In turn upon the stream of storms
From fountains beyond heaven;
To me, too, light is mystery,
The greater light half-given.
Ah, how make plain the goal obscure
Of thy journey but begun? "
Again the God smiled on the man
And asked, " Hast thou a son? "
He nodded. " And never yet hast guessed
That thou and he are one!
Leaf shall of leaf become aware
On the self-same bough and stem,
Whose branches are murmuring everywhere
And the heaven floods all of them! ...
Between you — between all that live —
Runs no gulf wide nor deep —
But a sheen'd veil, thinner than any veil,
Thin as the veil of sleep.

Through the death-veil — looming silverly —
The self-veil's subtle strand,
Dawns it not? For that dawn thy heart
Hath eye — shall understand;
Before its seeing rock-walls melt
And cracks the mortal band.

When once the whole consummate strength
Of thy slow-kindling mind
Can see in the heart's light at length
All strange sons of mankind,
Then Earth — that else were but a strait
Rock-sepulchre — is new:
Of what account to it is death?
Its glowing, through and through,
Moveth, alive with a God's breath,
Translucent as the dew! "