Classic Poem

CLXI.

O man is the beauty, and hearts are the glory
Of all the world's science and all the world's story;
And sorrow is softness, a heavenly birth,
To prevent our becoming as hard as the earth.

CLXII.

These far worlds astonish the mind out of breath,
So vastly outstretched in magnificent death;
But grandeur wants something more changeful to rest it;
It aches when one vision a long while hath pressed it.

CLXIII.

Homely earth, solar system, Milky Way all around us
Worlds beyond the horizon with which weak science bounds us, —
In and out of all these will he fitfully wander,
In his speed blending strangely the Here and the Yonder.

CLXIV.

Of all changing things far the loveliest is life,
And with that, of all places, the earth is most rife;
For awhile then at least will the Prince now descend,
And exhaust all the beauty of earth to its end.

CLXV.

But earth is so beautiful, he who is greedy
May take all he wants, and leave more to the needy;
For its lights and its shadows are fair to excess,
But its fairness is least of its happiness!

CLXVI.

Where the red Aurora wavily quivers,
He saw winter arrest the Siberian rivers,
And the glaciers bear on their patient backs
Huge boulders, and move in their slow stiff tracks.

CLXVII.

He saw open sea round the silent pole,
Neath the arctic moon watched the waters roll,
Felt the earth nod with a rocking motion,
Like a ship at anchor on the ocean.

CLXVIII.

From the leaning top of the world's north tower
He gazed entranced for many an hour,
Looked out into space, and wished there were bars
To hinder his leaping among the stars.

CLXIX.

Then he went over lakes that so deeply lie
The sun has to drink their waters dry,
Where the rivers of central Asia flow,
By the steppes which the salt-rime powders with snow.

CLXX.

He dwelt with delight for many a day
Mid the fabulous trees of the Himalay,
Where earth comes nearest to heaven, more near
Than the Andes come with their burning spear.