heaven

I1.
Breathers of wisdom won without a quest,
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Quaint uncouth dreamers, voices high and strange;
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Flutists of lands where beauty hath no change,
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And wintry grief is a forgotten guest,
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Sweet murmurers of everlasting rest,
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For whom glad days have ever yet to run,
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And moments are as aeons, and the sun
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But ever sunken half-way toward the west.1.
Often to me who heard you in your day,
.

Sunt aliquid manes; letum non omnia finit;
Luridaque evictos effugit umbra rogos.
PROPERTIUS.



To Albion's misty isle across the waves I sped me:
It look'd as if interr'd beneath a leaden sea,
And gathering round our bark the halcyon's music led me,
While all the crew rejoiced in their sweet melody.
The dancing surge, the evening breezes falling,
And through the sails and shrouds those breezes whistling thrill,
And to the watch the active helmsman calling,

Ah! happy he, upon whose birth each god
Looks down in love, whose earliest sleep the bright
Idalia cradles, whose young lips the rod
Of eloquent Hermes kindles--to whose eyes,
Scarce wakened yet, Apollo steals in light,
While on imperial brows Jove sets the seal of might!
Godlike the lot ordained for him to share,
He wins the garland ere he runs the race;
He learns life's wisdom ere he knows life's care,
And, without labor vanquished, smiles the grace.
Great is the man, I grant, whose strength of mind,

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind

Ye offspring of the morning sun,
Ye flowers that deck the smiling plain,
Your lives, in joy and bliss begun,
In Nature's love unchanged remain.
With hues of bright and godlike splendor
Sweet Flora graced your forms so tender,
And clothed ye in a garb of light;
Spring's lovely children weep forever,
For living souls she gave ye never,
And ye must dwell in endless night?

The nightingale and lark still sing
In your tranced ears the bliss of love;
The toying sylphs, on airy wing,

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! ev'n as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasures bring.
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shrivl'd heart
Could have recover'd greenness? It was gone
Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown;
Where they together
All the hard weather

The flash at midnight! - 'twas a light
That gave the blind a moment's sight
Then sank in tenfold gloom;
Loud, deep, and long, the thunder broke,
The deaf ear instantly awoke,
Then closed as in the tomb:
An angel might have passed my bed,
Sounded the trump of God, and fled.

So life appears; - a sudden birth,
A glance revealing heaven and earth
It is - and it is not!
So fame the poet's hope deceives,
Who sings for after time, and leaves
A name - to be forgot,
Life - is a lightning-flash of breath;

Why run the crowd? What means the throng
That rushes fast the streets along?
Can Rhodes a prey to flames, then, be?
In crowds they gather hastily,
And, on his steed, a noble knight
Amid the rabble, meets my sight;
Behind him--prodigy unknown!--
A monster fierce they're drawing on;
A dragon stems it by its shape,
With wide and crocodile-like jaw,
And on the knight and dragon gape,
In turns, the people, filled with awe.

And thousand voices shout with glee
"The fiery dragon come and see,

Sighing softly to the river
Comes the loving breeze,
Setting nature all a-quiver,
Rustling through the trees!
And the brook in rippling measure
Laughs for very love,
While the poplars, in their pleasure,
Wave their arms above!
River, river, little river,
May thy loving prosper ever.
Heaven speed thee, poplar tree,
May thy wooing happy be!

Yet, the breeze is but a rover,
When he wings away,
Brook and poplar mourn a lover!
Sighing well-a-day!
Ah, the doing and undoing

The vision of Christ that thou dost see
Is my vision’s greatest enemy.
Thine has a great hook nose like thine;
Mine has a snub nose like to mine.
Thine is the Friend of all Mankind;
Mine speaks in parables to the blind.
Thine loves the same world that mine hates;
Thy heaven doors are my hell gates.
Socrates taught what Meletus
Loath’d as a nation’s bitterest curse,
And Caiaphas was in his own mind
A benefactor to mankind.
Both read the Bible day and night,