Classic Poem

CCLX.

Earth showed him the footprints of ages, which she
Had so tenderly veiled with green grass or blue sea,
And he saw the true process of world-peopling, flowing
By routes unsuspected, a science worth knowing.

CCLXI.

Hieroglyphical marks became clear by degrees,
Either crooked or straight, like the wakes on calm seas,
The paths by which Asia her children had driven
From her hearth to fill earth at the bidding of heaven.

CCLXII.

He dreamed that he saw, was it more than a dream?
Laws, faiths, and philosophies national seem,
And that all mental glories subservient must be
To the physical spells of geography.

CCLXIII.

In the bright silver havens of cloudland above
He lingered to watch how the rainbow-looms move;
He heard light sing its songs in the calm upper ether,
And the whispers the clouds made when touching together.

CCLXIV.

Earth-weary he rose up again on swift wings
Through the half-solid space-matter, graven with rings,
The grooves of the stars in their orderly race
Through the infinite purple of icy-cold space.

CCLXV.

But his thoughts were more earthly; he lagged on the wing,
As earth's sounds in his ears kept murmuring;
Space appeared to resist him much more than before,
As he breasted the light on its outermost shore.

CCLXVI.

And the marvels of starry life soon became weary,
And the gulfs of the Milky Way manless and dreary:
How sweet looked our planet, when it first came in sight,
Like a teardrop of joy on the fair brow of night.

CCLXVII.

Ah! this foolish Prince! was the first hopeful feeling
That o'er thy young lifetime already was stealing;
This the true fountain deep in thee, the root
Of earth's wonderful flower that bears heavenly fruit.

CCLXVIII.

At last he was homesick; at last he was weary;
At last the world's outside shone cold-bright and dreary;
He had come to the end, and he saw that the light
Of beauty fell short of the infinite.

CCLXIX.

He was sick of the luscious cup nature had brought him,
And began to distrust the thin truths she had taught him;
At last came the time, when a soul full of beauty
Should feel the one lovely thing wanting was duty.

CCLXX.

Sad thoughts rose within him, distracting, prolific,
As he sank to the earth in the Southern Pacific,
On a cocoa-crowned crater, which coral worms built,
And the yellow brine-lichens had modestly gilt.