Classic Poem

Whoso a wondrous sight would see, —
Sight perchance thou ne'er hast seen —
Come, and on the sky with me
Upward look; and let no tree,
No spire, nor hill-top intervene
To check the thought, that clear and free
Should seek the cope — forgetting e'en
The distant hills, on which to thee
The bending heavens did seem to lean.

Still upward look, — no sun in view
Quells with his fiercer gaze the sight;
But, spread through all the spreading blue,
Quenched and diffused, a sky more bright,
A softer light, hue blent with hue,
Seems that which late a dazzling might
Of sight-beclouding brightness threw
From one fierce eye of central light: —
Look upward still; — yon cloud of white,
A vapor of the purest dew,
That to the azure's utmost height
Seemed close as if thereon it grew,
Heaven lifts and spreads beyond it quite,
In grandeur to thy vision new.

Thou hast seen Ocean, in the hour
When whirlwinds rouse its sluggish might
To wrestle with their viewless power; —
And more, hast felt, too vast for sight,
How far it stretched beyond the lower
Of that rude storm and scowling night
In which the headlands seemed to cower,
Into calm realms and tranquil light.
But what was that to yon blue sea,
Yon steadfast ocean, spreading o'er
Both sea and land, vast, bright and free,
Without a sound, or wave, or shore,
There stretching everlastingly.
And thou on mountain heights hast been
With heights above, that skyward rear
Their snowy summits, clear and keen,
Through clouds that in the calmest mood
Of heaven, like the wings of Fear,
Restless and dark, the tempest brood,
— Ice-rifted summits, keen and clear,
Not even by weeping night bedewed; —
Lifted above the changing year,
Naked of flower, or stream, or wood,
Or scantiest moss — so high that there
Not even the eagle tears his food:
So high, it seems in that still air
As they, while earth's lone watch they keep,
Could list each heavenly marinere
That singing stems the azure deep,
And circling his predestined sphere,
With us around the sun doth sweep;
And aye in that still solitude,
So high above the stormy jars
Of Earth and Ocean's voices rude,
Might hear faint whispers from the stars
That stand in stirless multitude:
— But what was that, to Heaven's blue floor,
Earth's skiey roof, air's steadfast sea,
That lifts and spreads, and evermore
Doth spread and lift in majesty
Unseen, unheard, undreamed before —
And is , as now it seems to be,
As high those towering mountains o'er,
And stretched alike o'er them, as thee!

Thou hast no words, nor could be found
Words to express that boundless sky,
Though thou the thought of Demons owned,
And given to speak the vision by
A voice like wakeful Ocean's sound
Or Wind's eternal harmony: —
All sound hath measure, and each tone
Is linked in thought to things that die:
In the unfathomed depth alone
And power of silence doth it lie
To speak the sight, that to thine eye,
(To eye or thought before unknown,
Or known but as Divinity,)
Seems, as it spreads, vast, boundless, one, —
The shadow of Infinity
Over the trembling finite thrown.

It lifts, it spreads no more, — but lo!
'Tis thine own thought, that wondrous thought, —
The thought of which we nothing know,
But know we cannot deem it nought:
As reeds that ever to and fro
Wave and whisper, still untaught
The mystery of the winds that blow, —
Or river-lilies that are caught
In every stir of waves below,
Yet know not of their motion aught,
And list and list their endless flow,
But know not whence their stream is brought,
Or why they ever murmur so; —
It is the thought of Being — nay,
'Tis Being's self that fills thy gaze;
And thought, which is a conscious ray
In being's omnipresent blaze,
Beams back upon the source of day: —
And lost all sense of nights and days,
(Shadows of that and glimpses they)
And form and motion's endless maze, —
Feels that to be , is still to be ,
And there as on its centre stays;
And, time and self forgot, doth see
In that blue sea of boundless haze
A visible Eternity.

Ay, close thine eyes, and from the whole,
Seek thy lost being to regain, —
Close them, and the wearied soul
Shut back upon itself again; —
For never hath thy thought before
Into the soul of Being past;
To life might be revealed no more
With life, it might no longer last.
Thy sight returns, — and shadows gray
Fall from the brooding wings of even,
But where that sky stretched wide as day,
And high as is the thought of heaven,
Even with thy turning eyes it rushed
Back on the hills and closed around,
Just as the world's first murmur gushed
Back on thine ear awaked to sound:
'Tis the same sky thy childhood saw
When heaven did lie above the blue,
And thou beheldst it half in awe;
For aye his searching eye looked through.
And see, the Angel of the night
Stands glittering on yon hill, — but why
Gleams his pale eye so strangely bright,
Then trembles back into the sky?
It conscious looks and jealous seems
Of secrets seen in day's clear deep,
More wondrous than the thousand gleams
He heralds on yon dusky steep: —
And thou, in vision past revealing,
Hast seen without a sense of seeing,
And felt without a thought of feeling,
The power, the mystery of Being.