Classic Poem

I.

Sit here and muse! — it is an antique room —
High-roof'd, with casements, through whose purple pane
Unwilling Daylight steals amidst the gloom,
Shy as a fearful stranger.
There They reign
(In loftier pomp than waking life had known),
The Kings of Thought! — not crown'd until the grave.
When Agamemnon sinks into the tomb,
The beggar Homer mounts the Monarch's throne!
Ye ever-living and imperial Souls,
Who rule us from the page in which ye breathe,
All that divide us from the clod ye gave! —
Law — Order — Love — Intelligence — the Sense
Of Beauty — Music and the Minstrel's wreath! —
What were our wanderings if without your goals?
As air and light, the glory ye dispense
Becomes our being — who of us can tell
What he had been, had Cadmus never taught
The art that fixes into form the thought —
Had Plato never spoken from his cell,
Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?
Kinder all earth hath grown since genial Shakspere sung!

II.

Hark! while we muse, without the walls is heard
The various murmur of the labouring crowd,
How still, within those archive-cells interr'd,
The Calm Ones reign! — and yet they rouse the loud
Passions and tumults of the circling world!
From them, how many a youthful Tully caught
The zest and ardour of the eager Bar;
From them, how many a young Ambition sought
Gay meteors glancing o'er the sands afar —
By them each restless wing has been unfurl'd,
And their ghosts urge each rival's rushing car!
They made yon Preacher zealous for the truth;
They made yon Poet wistful for the star;
Gave Age its pastime — fired the cheek of Youth —
The unseen sires of all our beings are, —
III.

And now so still! This, Cicero, is thy heart;
I hear it beating through each purple line.
This is thyself, Anacreon — yet, thou art
Wreath'd, as in Athens, with the Cnidian vine.
I ope thy pages, Milton, and, behold,
Thy spirit meets me in the haunted ground! —
Sublime and eloquent, as while, of old,
" It flamed and sparkled in its crystal bound;"
These are yourselves — your life of life! The Wise,
(Minstrel or Sage) out of their books are clay;
But in their books, as from their graves, they rise,
Angels — that, side by side, upon our way,
Walk with and warn us!
Hark! the world so loud,
And they, the movers of the world, so still!

What gives this beauty to the grave? the shroud
Scarce wraps the Poet, than at once there cease
Envy and Hate! " Nine cities claim him dead,
Through which the living Homer begg'd his bread!"
And what the charm that can such health distil
From wither'd leaves — oft poisons in their bloom?
We call some books immoral! Do they live?
If so, believe me, T IME hath made them pure.
In Books, the veriest wicked rest in peace —
God wills that nothing evil shall endure;
The grosser parts fly off and leave the whole,
As the dust leaves the disembodied soul!
Come from thy niche, Lucretius! Thou didst give
Man the black creed of Nothing in the tomb!
Well, when we read thee, does the dogma taint?
No; with a listless eye we pass it o'er,
And linger only on the hues that paint
The Poet's spirit lovelier than his lore.
None learn from thee to cavil with their God;
None commune with thy genius to depart
Without a loftier instinct of the heart.
Thou mak'st no Atheist — thou but mak'st the mind
Richer in gifts which Atheists best confute —
F ANCY AND T HOUGHT ! 'Tis these that from the sod
Lift us! The life which soars above the brute
Ever and mightiest, breathes from a great Poet's lute!
Lo! that grim Merriment of Hatred; — born
Of him, — the Master-Mocker of Mankind,
Beside the grin of whose malignant spleen,
Voltaire's gay sarcasm seems a smile serene, —
Do we not place it in our children's hands,
Leading young Hope through Lemuel's fabled Iands? —
God's and man's libel in that foul Yahoo! —
Well, and what mischief can the libel do?
O impotence of Genius to belie
Its glorious task — its mission from the sky!
Swift wrote this book to wreak a ribald scorn
On aught the Man should love or Priest should mourn —
And lo! the book, from all its ends beguil'd,
A harmless wonder to some happy child!

IV.

All books grow homilies by time; they are
Temples, at once, and Landmarks. In them, we
Who but for them, upon that inch of ground
We call " T HE P RESENT ," from the cell could see
No daylight trembling on the dungeon bar;
Turn, as we list, the globe's great axle round,
And feel the Near less household than the Far!
Traverse all space, and number every star,
There is no Past, so long as Books shall live!
A disinterr'd Pompeii wakes again
For him who seeks yon well; lost cities give
Up their untarnish'd wonders, and the reign
Of Jove revives and Saturn: — at our will
Rise dome and tower on Delphi's sacred hill;
Bloom Cimon's trees in Academe; — along
Leucadia's headland, sighs the Lesbian's song;
With Ægypt's Queen once more we sail the Nile,
And learn how worlds are barter'd for a smile: —
Rise up, ye walls, with gardens blooming o'er,
Ope but that page — lo, Babylon once more!

V.

Ye make the Past our heritage and home:
And is this all? No; by each prophet-sage —
No; by the herald souls that Greece and Rome
Sent forth, like hymns, to greet the Morning Star
That rose on Bethlehem — by thy golden page,
Melodious Plato — by thy solemn dreams,
World-wearied Tully! — and, above ye all,
By T HIS , the Everlasting Monument
Of God to mortals, on whose front the beams
Flash glory-breathing day — our lights ye are
To the dark Bourne beyond; in you are sent
The types of Truths whose life is T HE T O-COME ;
In you soars up the Adam from the fall;
In you the F UTURE as the P AST is given —
Ev'n in our death ye bid us hail our birth; —
Unfold these pages, and behold the Heaven,
Without one gravestone left upon the Earth?