Classic Poem

How many of the bright names now that seem
In fame's high heaven fixed eternal spheres
Shall hold their faint reflections in the stream
Of memory ten hundred thousand years?

Who knows but we are in the night and yet
There is a universal sun to rise,
When all these twinkling stars of fame shall set,
Or fade into the nothingness of skies?

Mankind may climb the pyramid of soul,
Up by the stairflight of the centuries,
So high that they shall hear the anthems roll
Of seraphim, and see where heaven is.

And then the loud huzzas of these low times,
That send up great names, may not strike their ears,
Enraptured with the fugues of upper climes
And with the silent music of the spheres.

The highest peaks of glory now that rise
May yet be whelmed rocks in that spirit-sea
On whose floodtide upfloating toward the skies
The ark of raised humanity shall be.

Names, voices, die; ay, letters that enshrine
Their corses have at last their burial-day;
But thoughts, which are their spirits, hold divine
Existence, and shall never pass away.

No drop of thought once mingled with the sea
Of soul shall perish, though it disappear;
The vapor into which it dies may be
Born into rainbow in some other year.

Or, rising in its darkness, it may swell
Some thundercloud of passion yet to loom;
For thought, of heaven born or born of hell,
Doubles itself for aye in gleam or gloom.