Classic Poem

I

Upon the other side of that worn pad
My eye began to weed a poet's soul
Out of the scanty sentences I saved: —
The landmarks of some mood writ out at large
In an epistle to a trusted friend,
The bulk of which having perished, what remained
Showed like some mighty mind that threw its light
On some far period in the dawn of time.

II

" Where shall I plant my foot "; — Starting with doubt,
Or what is kin to doubt — perplexity: —
Ah! little knows the garrulous world of men
What night envelops the creating mind,
When, with its sleepless energies at bay,
It tries to give a form unto those things
Its power hath conjured up; while o'er the steeps
Of high forbidding thought a moon will flash,
And fling its inspiration and its light
Upon the jagged path, and then return
Behind the hungry darkness, while alone,
The sorely tried formative principle
Sinks back again upon chaotic thought,
Having missed the golden and supreme delight
Of full conception. — What a mood is this!
What godlike chafing! what endeavour! strength!
What throes, as of dim chaos giving birth
To the harmonious world! Then breaks the light
After long years, perchance, and all is changed
To order from disorder, gathered up
Into the central and absorbing sun
Of his intelligence, the poet sees
The intuitions and the ends of things
Whirled erewhile round the dark and empty vast,
Fall into rank and shape his universe.
All hath been said and sung, and it remains
For the aged mind to see monotony,
And cease from reproduction of the past.
Old Homer, thou art greatly what thou art,
Because thy fortune gave thee virgin soil
To raise thy harvest from, and none were by
Thy cunning to dispute. — Or is there here
A more heroic note of hope and strength,
A mind that sees within these latter times
Riches before undreamed of, that will stoop
Its crest to no name past, but with a look
That saith, " Some mightier spirits needs must be
" To show the complex workings of this world
" Than those who sang sweet stories to its youth,
" And I am one of such?" — there is no aim,
Nor an ambition of such heavenly touch,
As that the poet feels — how weak such thoughts!
A handful of poor guesses at some hour
Known only to the mind o'er which it lay.

" Running a race" gainst time with small results' ; —
This speaks of days of gloom, when the dulled mind
In apathy sinks back upon itself —
When Nature seems a blank, and stateliest verse
A work of idleness; through the dreamy wall
Wherewith the poet hems his life around,
The bleak reality of things will burst
Like a December gloom, and then faith goes
In any high heroic enterprise, —
Thought shows itself below the estimate
Of happier moments; yea, the mind itself,
Hurled from the wall of heaven which it would scale,
Lies numbed upon the earth. So poets wait
For the irregular hours they call divine,
And learn how frail their power compared with time.

" Anticipation" — So we pass the days
Within the echoing vales, with unstrung lyre
Laid by — in meditation, while we catch
Like flashing flights of spirits to and fro
Between the pauses of our joyful breath
Some vision of completion, that will play
At hide-and-seek around our rapturous mood,
Lulling the unproductive hours with sight
Of the great tracts beyond, which we are graced
To view, ere we pass through them; all the life
Gathered within a moment, which the mind
Feels to be ample payment for its toils.

V

" Completion " — now to rest and cast the eye
Upon the road that led unto the stars,
And feel the value of the storms that shake
The regions where designing spirits dwell. —
A moment do we rest, no more, and then
Some new desire awakes and all is o'er —
Rest is decay, to labour is to grow —
All the high idols of the past are shrunk
Gleaming within their niches far away,
And we behold above our heads appear
Far other heights we never dreamed were there;
For while we thought we climbed some mighty Alp,
We only scaled some puny eminence
That lay within the shadow at its base.