Classic Poem

Two mighty angels in the outer blue,
With great palm branches slanting in their hands
Stood by the golden gate that guards the view
Wherein God's temple stands.

So still they were, the porphyry pillars high
That propt the fretted cornice and the frieze,
Stood not more breathless when the choral sky
Withheld its symphonies.

And golden haloes bound their brows in light,
Till each head shone like Saturn with his rings,
And to their sandals, beautiful and bright
Went down their crosswise wings.

Low at their feet, with pinions all distraught,
As they the Siroc's stormy path had swept,
And ashen cheeks still hot with burning thought,
A spirit sat and wept: —

And shed such tears as from the heart can flow
Alone when Hope flies far from our distress,
Leaving no guide athwart the world of woe,
The pathless wilderness.

Thus have I seen some sad and sightless one,
Before a palace with nor hound nor staff,
Sit weeping in the sultry dust, with none
To speak in his behalf.

But happier far that prisoner from the day,
With all the sunlight mocking his blank eyes,
Than him, whose doomed path forgotten lay
Along the under skies.

Doomed and forgotten! These are sounds attuned
To all the world conceives of misery —
And drown the heart, as if the last wave swooned
Above us in the sea!

Doomed and forgotten — by our God forgot,
Who noteth even the sparrow in his fall;
With whom the smallest living thing is not
For his great care too small.

Doomed and forgotten — at the angel's feet
He sat with dull and weary wings deprest, —
But now, where once the song of peace was sweet,
There came no voice of rest.

There was a time, while yet his cheek's soft glow
Bloomed in the boyhood of his earthly years,
He had a vision, which no man may know,
That drowned his eyes with tears.

Some God-sent angel, wavering down the sky,
Had sought him when the world was most apart,
And given this vision to his dreaming eye,
And stamped it on his heart.

Then he withdrew from all his fellow youths,
His heaven-touched soul with inspiration filled,
And said " My time is God's; the cause is Truth's;
Beneath their dome I build! "

For days and nights he walked the solemn wood,
Rounding to fullest from his great intent,
And viewless phantoms all about him stood,
And followed where he went.

If he despaired, the pine-cone in his way
Fell from the limb that sentinels the wind —
The small spring whispered courage where it lay
In ancient rocks enshrined.

The wintry mountain stood with glory topt,
And Iris bound the labouring torrent's brow,
The acorn, full of future summers, dropt
From out the stormy bough.

The flowery vines in Nature's unseen hand
Curled into wreaths, as if Fame wandered there, —
The laurel, leaning o'er the pathway, fanned
The brightness of his hair.

There was a time! — oh, sad and bitter breath
That sighs o'er loss of days, no more to be —
Of actions dropt to dreams — and dreams to death,
And then — Eternity!

There crouched the spirit, abject and forlorn,
Upon the azure highway, like a blot,
And raised its low, voice, for they needs must mourn
The doomed and the forgot.

But soon, abashed to hear his own " alas! "
He took his way aslant the nether space —
And, wheresoe'er a star beheld him pass,
It turned and veiled its face!

Oh soul, remember, howe'er small the scope
Of thought, or action, that around thee lies,
It is the finished task alone can ope
The gates of Paradise.