Classic Poem

Thou fair enchantress of my willing heart,
Who charmest it to deep and dreary slumber,
Gilding mine evening clouds of revery!
Thou lovely siren, who, with still small voice
Most softly musical, dost lure me on
O'er the wide sea of indistinct idea,
Or quaking sands of untried theory,
Or ridgy shoals of fixt experiment
That wind a dubious pathway thro' the deep!
Imagination, I am thine own child:
Have I not often sat with thee retired,
Alone, yet not alone; though grave, most glad;
All silent outwardly, but loud within,
As from the distant hum of many waters,
Weaving the tissue of some delicate thought,
And hushing every breath that might have rent
Our web of gossamer, so finely spun?
Have I not often listed thy sweet song,
(While in vague echoes and Æolian notes
The chambers of my heart have answered it,)
With eye as bright in joy, and fluttering pulse,
As the coy village maiden's, when her lover
Whispers his hope to her delighted ear?
And, taught by thee, angelic visitant,
Have I not learnt to love the tuneful lyre,
Draining from every chord its musical soul?
Have I not learnt to find in all that is,
Somewhat to touch the heart, or raise the mind?
Somewhat of grand and beautiful to praise
Alike in small and great things? and this power,
This clearing of the eye, this path made straight
Even to the heart's own heart, its innermost core,
This keenness to perceive, and seek and find
And love and prize all-present harmony;
This, more than choosing words to clothe the tho't,
Makes the true poet; this thy glorious gift,
Imagination, rescues me thy son
(Thy son, albeit least worthy,) from the lust
Of mammon, and the cares of animal life,
And the dull thraldom of this work-day world.

Indulgent lover, I am all thine own;
What art thou not to me? Ah, little know
The worshippers of cold reality,
The grosser minds, who most sincerely think
That sense is the broad avenue to bliss,
Little know they the thrilling ecstasy,
The delicate refinement in delight,
That cheers the thoughtful spirit, as it soars
Far above all these petty things of life;
And strengthened by the flight and cordial joys,
Can then come down to earth and common men
Better in motive, stronger in resolve,
Apter to use all means to compass good,
And of more charitable mind to all.
Imagination, art thou not my friend
In crowds and solitude, my comrade dear,
Brother, and sister, mine own other self,
The Hector to my soul's Andromache?

Triumphant beauty, bright intelligence!
The chastened fire of ecstasy suppressed
Beams from thine eye; because thy secret heart,
Like that strange sight burning, yet unconsumed,
Is all on flame a censer filled with odours,
And to my mind, who feel thy fearful power,
Suggesting passive terrors and delights,
A slumbering volcano: thy dark cheek,
Warm and transparent, by its half-formed dimple
Reveals an under-world of wondrous things
Ripe in their richness: as among the bays
Of blest Bermuda, through the sapphire deep
Ruddy and white fantastically branch
The coral groves; thy broad and sunny brow,
Made fertile by the genial smile of heaven,
Shoots up an hundred fold the glorious crop
Of arabesque ideas; forth from thy curls,
Half hidden in their black luxuriance,
The twining sister-graces lightly spring,
The Muses, and the Passions, and young Love,
Tritons and Naiads, Pegasus, and Sphinx,
Atlas, Briareus, Phaeton, and Cyclops,
Centaurs, and shapes uncouth, and wild conceits:
And in the midst blazes the star of mind,
Illumining the classic portico
That leads to the high dome where Learning sits:
On either side of that broad sunny brow
Flame-coloured pinions, streaked with gold and blue,
Burst from the teeming brain; while under them
The forked lightning, and the cloud-robed thunder,
And fearful shadows, and unhallowed eyes,
And strange foreboding forms of terrible things
Lurk in the midnight of thy raven locks.

And thou hast been the sunshine to my landscape,
Imagination; thou hast wreathed me smiles,
And hung them on a statue's marble lips;
Hast made earth's dullest pebbles bright like gems;
Hast lent me thine own silken clue, to rove
The ideal labyrinths of a thousand spheres;
Hast lengthened out my nights with life-long dreams,
And with glad seeming gilt my darkest day;
Helped me to scale in thought the walls of heaven
While journeying wearily this busy world;
Sent me to pierce the palpable clouds with eagles,
And with leviathan the silent deep;
Hast taught my youthful spirit to expand
Beyond himself, and live in other scenes,
And other times, and among other men;
Hast bid me cherish, silent and alone,
First feelings, and young hopes, and better aims,
And sensibilities of delicate sort,
Like timorous mimosas, which the breath,
The cold and cautious breath of daily life,
Hath not as yet had power to blight and kill
From my heart's garden; for they stand retired,
Screened from the north by groves of rooted thought.

Without thine aid, how cheerless were all time,
But chief the short sweet hours of earliest love;
When the young mind, athirst for happiness,
And all-exulting in that new-found treasure,
The wealth of being loved, as well as loving,
Sees not, and hears not, knows not, thinks not, speaks not.
Except it be of her, his one desire;
And thy rose-coloured glass on every scene
With more than earthly promise cheats the eye,
While the charm'd ear drinks thy melodious words,
And the heart reels, drunk with ideal beauty,
So too the memory of departed joy,
Walking in black with sprinkled tears of pearl,
Passes before the mind with look less stern
And foot more lightened, when thine inward power,
Most gentle friend, upon that clouded face
Sheds the fair light of better joy to come,
And throws round grief the azure scarf of Hope.

As the wild chamois bounds from rock to rock,
Oft on the granite steeples nicely poised,
Unconscious that the cliff from which he hangs
Was once a fiery sea of molten stone,
Shot up ten thousand feet and crystallized
When earth was labouring with her kraken brood;
So have I sped with thee, my bright-eyed love,
Imagination, over pathless winds,
Bounding from thought to thought, unmindful of
The fever of my soul that shot them up,
And made a ready footing for my speed,
As like the whirlwind I have flown along
Winged with ecstatic mind, and carried away,
Like Ganymede of old, o'er cloud-capt Ida,
Or Alps, or Andes, or the ice-bound shores
Of Arctic or Antarctic—stolen from earth
Her sister-planets and the twinkling eyes
That watched her from afar, to the pure seat
Of rarest Matter's last-created world,
And brilliant halls of self-existing Light.