Classic Poem

CCXXI.

It must be some outward thing only will reach
To the depths of his soul, and some outward thing teach
That wisdom which lies beneath thoughts, words, and years,
Whose meaning is worship, whose language is tears.

CCXXII.

He has lost his old habit of looking within;
He is deafened by elements, hears not his kin,
As they wail from the earth's distant surface below him,
Yet fear his return, lest their hearts should not know him.

CCXXIII.

Let him drink his wild fill of material charms;
Some accident doubtless will wake sweet alarms
In a nature fast losing itself, and astray;
For accidents work the best wonders alway!

CCXXIV.

It was beauty he sought and beauty he found,
On the earth, in the air, and under the ground:
Time was one beauty, and space was another,
And a man has no griefs who is not man's brother.

CCXXV.

He could pass through the planet diameter-wise,
Where the granite arch o'er the centre lies,
Through the central fires, and the voiceless wailing
Of spirits there eternally ailing.

CCXXVI.

He could circle the earth underground,
Where the subterranean waters sound,
In grottoes and streets which the diamond lights,
And the lamps of the opal stalactites.

CCXXVII.

On the top of the atmosphere well could he ride,
Or again in the hollow equator slide,
Or lie where it bulges, and midnight and noon
Be cradled there by the nursing moon.

CCXXVIII.

'Twas a poet's life, a voluptuous calm,
All music and metre, all fragrance and balm,
A half-waking dream from the dawn to the even,
A banquet of blossoms, a pantheist heaven!

CCXXIX.

Forever to him jealous nature was bidden
To open her gates, that he might pass unchidden
To all the vast palaces God was adorning,
When the stars sang together in nature's first morning.

CCXXX.

All beauty that matter can show him shall be
Unrolled to his eyes like the broad open sea;
The elements too shall go with him in throngs,
Singing their sweet untranslateable songs.