Classic Poem

He longs with a tireless yearning,
Still seeking, wandering, turning
At all times and everywhere,
The sought-for goal receding,
Flitting, enticing, leading
With shifting likeness fair.

A nodding flower of azure
Above the field's ripe treasure
First lures the wanderer on,
But when he would stoop to pick it,
It sinks in the billowy thicket
Of rye-blades and is gone.

A banner all golden-rifted,
That spirit hands have lifted,
On sunset towers upborne,
An echo resounding faintly,
That's blown from an old and quaintly
Wrought silver legend-horn.

An organ-rapture outpouring
From some great cathedral soaring
Mid streets where visions dwell.
The blow of a hammer thund'rous
When angels rear a wondrous
Dream-lovely citadel.

A sighing of ocean surges
When dawn's first wave emerges
On night's pale galaxy.
He listens and looks with yearning,
Still this way and that way turning
To find what it may be.

A sea to which years run lightly,
A river that mirrors brightly
The spring and its beauties rare,
Beside whose waters haunted
Two mortals languish enchanted
And see but each other there.

The river hastes from the flowers
To autumn's golden bowers,
And whirls the dry leaves they wore
To ocean, the dark Unbounded.
The wanderer, staring astounded,
Asks: " What of the farther shore? "

Perhaps his desire is bended
On something uncomprehended,
Which no man may comprehend;
But he must ever be yearning,
Must ever be wandering, turning,
And seeking it without end.

And should he reach World's Ending,
With no road further tending,
The border of Nothingness,
He'd bend him over the steep there
And gaze into the deep there
With straining-eyed distress.

And leaning over the steep there,
He 'd cry into the deep there, —
That echoless, vast Untrod, —
And onward the shout should go where
Is naught but the voice of Nowhere,
Go ringing through Chaos: " God! "