Beautiful is the tradition Of that flight through heavenly portals, The old classic superstition Of the theft and the transmission Of the fire of the Immortals!
First the deed of noble daring, Born of heavenward aspiration, Then the fire with mortals sharing, Then the vulture,--the despairing Cry of pain on crags Caucasian.
All is but a symbol painted Of the Poet, Prophet, Seer;Only those are crowned and sainted Who with grief have been acquainted, Making nations nobler, freer.
In their feverish exultations, In their triumph and their yearning, In their passionate pulsations, In their words among the nations, The Promethean fire is burning.
Shall it, then, be unavailing, All this toil for human culture?
Through the cloud-rack, dark and trailing, Must they see above them sailing O'er life's barren crags the vulture?
Such a fate as this was Dante's, By defeat and exile maddened;Thus were Milton and Cervantes, Nature's priests and Corybantes, By affliction touched and saddened.
But the glories so transcendent That around their memories cluster, And, on all their steps attendant, Make their darkened lives resplendent With such gleams of inward lustre!
All the melodies mysterious, Through the dreary darkness chanted;Thoughts in attitudes imperious, Voices soft, and deep, and serious, Words that whispered, songs that haunted!
All the soul in rapt suspension, All the quivering, palpitating Chords of life in utmost tension, With the fervor of invention, With the rapture of creating!
Ah, Prometheus! heaven-scaling!
In such hours of exultation Even the faintest heart, unquailing, Might behold the vulture sailing Round the cloudy crags Caucasian!
Though to all there is not given Strength for such sublime endeavor, Thus to scale the walls of heaven, And to leaven with fiery leaven All the hearts of men for ever;Yet all bards, whose hearts unblighted Honor and believe the presage, Hold aloft their torches lighted, Gleaming through the realms benighted, As they onward bear the message!
EPIMETHEUS
OR THE POET'S AFTERTHOUGHT
Have I dreamed? or was it real, What I saw as in a vision, When to marches hymeneal In the land of the Ideal Moved my thought o'er Fields Elysian?
What! are these the guests whose glances Seemed like sunshine gleaming round me?
These the wild, bewildering fancies, That with dithyrambic dances As with magic circles bound me?
Ah! how cold are their caresses!
Pallid cheeks, and haggard bosoms!
Spectral gleam their snow-white dresses, And from loose dishevelled tresses Fall the hyacinthine blossoms!
O my songs! whose winsome measures Filled my heart with secret rapture!
Children of my golden leisures!
Must even your delights and pleasures Fade and perish with the capture?
Fair they seemed, those songs sonorous, When they came to me unbidden;Voices single, and in chorus, Like the wild birds singing o'er us In the dark of branches hidden.
Disenchantment! Disillusion!
Must each noble aspiration Come at last to this conclusion, Jarring discord, wild confusion, Lassitude, renunciation?
Not with steeper fall nor faster, From the sun's serene dominions, Not through brighter realms nor vaster, In swift ruin and disaster, Icarus fell with shattered pinions!
Sweet Pandora! dear Pandora!
Why did mighty Jove create thee Coy as Thetis, fair as Flora, Beautiful as young Aurora, If to win thee is to hate thee?
No, not hate thee! for this feeling Of unrest and long resistance Is but passionate appealing, A prophetic whisper stealing O'er the chords of our existence.
Him whom thou dost once enamour, Thou, beloved, never leavest;In life's discord, strife, and clamor, Still he feels thy spell of glamour;Him of Hope thou ne'er bereavest.
Weary hearts by thee are lifted, Struggling souls by thee are strengthened, Clouds of fear asunder rifted, Truth from falsehood cleansed and sifted, Lives, like days in summer, lengthened!
Therefore art thou ever clearer, O my Sibyl, my deceiver!
For thou makest each mystery clearer, And the unattained seems nearer, When thou fillest my heart with fever!
Muse of all the Gifts and Graces!
Though the fields around us wither, There are ampler realms and spaces, Where no foot has left its traces:
Let us turn and wander thither!
THE LADDER OF ST.AUGUSTINE
Saint Augustine! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame!
All common things, each day's events, That with the hour begin and end, Our pleasures and our discontents, Are rounds by which we may ascend.
The low desire, the base design, That makes another's virtues less;The revel of the ruddy wine, And all occasions of excess;The longing for ignoble things;
The strife for triumph more than truth;
The hardening of the heart, that brings Irreverence for the dreams of youth;All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds, That have their root in thoughts of ill;Whatever hinders or impedes The action of the nobler will;--All these must first be trampled down Beneath our feet, if we would gain In the bright fields of fair renown The right of eminent domain.
We have not wings, we cannot soar;
But we have feet to scale and climb By slow degrees, by more and more, The cloudy summits of our time.
The mighty pyramids of stone That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, When nearer seen, and better known, Are but gigantic flights of stairs.
The distant mountains, that uprear Their solid bastions to the skies, Are crossed by pathways, that appear As we to higher levels rise.
The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night.
Standing on what too long we bore With shoulders bent and downcast eyes, We may discern--unseen before--A path to higher destinies.
Nor deem the irrevocable Past, As wholly wasted, wholly vain, If, rising on its wrecks, at last To something nobler we attain.
THE PHANTOM SHIP