Classic Poem

O rather would I hear in murmur slow,
The dying cadence of some funeral bell,
With melancholy echoes far
That lapse to silence, for the good man's soul,
Who, after a long life of righteous deeds,
Now has laid down the burden of his age,
And fitly summoned to his fathers, sleeps
With them, along the green hill-side. Such peal,
Methinks, need not disturb our dim retreats,
The depth of shaded forests robed in night,
Or the true faces of the upland hills,
Where nature wears even in her winter shroud
A look of joy, and calm content, unfading!
Let me hear that solemn-stealing bell,
And pause a moment in the whirling tide,
That bears me headlong on to the still regions
Where our fathers sleep, and reign o'er silence;
Let me reverence their lives, and so prepare
My soul, for higher duties.
If thy heart,
Pained by humanity, desire retreat,
This, thou may find and undisturbed secure,
Near the calm bosom of the inland pond,
For storms too sheltered and for forms too free,
Where no vexatious villa greets the eye,
Or blazing chateau proud with whited walls.
Here, save the lone Kingfisher rattling o'er,
Belted with blue, and half an azure wave,
Or the great Northern diver, laughing bird,
Saluting with her lonely peals the shore,
Nought thee shall trouble; here thou canst repose
And dream away the pains of ardent life,
Forego ambition and the world's applause,
Stretching along the bank, fanned by the wind
That even in summer heats, from the cool surface
Quaffs a breath of life, forget thy madness,
Thy contriving wit, that made thee stoop
To things beneath thyself. Around, the woods
Lift up most ample canopies; old Pines,
Yellow with spendthrift lichens, whispering groves
Where youthful Birches frolic in their prime,
And ever-graceful Maples with light leaves
That turn the zephyr's kiss. Nor fail to mark
The distant vision of the Hill-top blue,
Where through the trees a vista opening far,
Lets in a line of landscape on thy thought,
And shows its moral by a fairer scene,
More beautiful with distance.
No palace,
Rich in all Italia's art, e'er showed
Like this calm pond, a store of rivalries.
As if resolved, to outdo the bank,
The tranquil wave reflects in its deep bosom,
Or sleeping rock or soft and shaded hill,
More perfected than in their real shape.
So Nature plays the artist and defies
Human ambition to surpass her skill.
Here, sometimes gliding in his peaceful skiff
Climéne sails, heir of the World, and notes
In his perception that no thing escapes,
Each varying pulse along Life's arteries,
Both what she half resolves and half effects,
As well as her whole purpose.
To his eye,
The stars of many a midnight heaven
Have beamed tokens of love, types of the Soul,
And lifted him to more primeval natures,
Than adorn the lower sphere. He saw
In those far-moving barks on heaven's sea,
Radiates of force, and while he moved from man,
Lost on the eternal billow, still his heart
Beat with some natural fondness for his race.
Kind egotist, who still pursuing Art,
Turned with a half-felt joy to lesser things!
In other lands, they might have worshipt him,
Nations had stood and blocked their chariot wheels
At his approach, and cities stooped beneath his foot!
But here, in our vast wilderness he walks
Alone (if 'tis to be alone), when stars
And breath of summer mountain-airs and morn,
And the wild music of the untempered sea,
Consort with human genius, for his soul,—
Climéne's soul leagues with these sources,
These informing depths, and his pure mould
Was laid, in the great sunshine, of the universe.
O could not thou revere, bold Stranger, prone
To inly smile and chide at human power,
Our humble fields and lowly stooping hills,—
Yellow with Johnswort, bright with Blue-eyed grass,
When thou shall learn that here Climéne trod,
Here thought and from these modest surfaces
Plucked fruits of Hesperides.
Who are the great?
They, who compose the current of the state,—
War's conquerors, radiant with rapine,
Bleeding in their seats so that the longest peace
Can never still their memories, or they
Who build leagues of oblivion and their tombs,
Commercial cities! fettering the poor;
Or noisy babblers, in the weary halls
Where legislation crowns her acts with wind,
Or far beyond, Mechanics, who displace
Aged exertion with inventive skill;
Or rather he, whose Thought girds in the whole,
And like a sentinel on the outpost of time
Challenges Eternity and bids it speak?
I know not, let the world decide; but life
I feel, is never spent in vain, that leads
Man to revere himself and so his aim,
Be to rise higher towards the social good,
And so exalt at once with him, mankind.