Volume II Part 28 (2/2)

The Earth is old; Six thousand winters make her heart a-cold; The sceptre slanteth from her palsied hold.

She saith, ”'Las me! G.o.d's word that I was 'good'

Is taken back to heaven, From whence when any sound comes, I am riven By some sharp bolt; and now no angel would Descend with sweet dew-silence on my mountains, To glorify the lovely river fountains That gush along their side: I see--O weary change!--I see instead This human wrath and pride, These thrones and tombs, judicial wrong and blood, And bitter words are poured upon mine head-- 'O Earth! thou art a stage for tricks unholy, A church for most remorseful melancholy; Thou art so spoilt, we should forget we had An Eden in thee, wert thou not so sad!'

Sweet children, I am old! ye, every one, Do keep me from a portion of my sun.

Give praise in change for brightness!

That I may shake my hills in infiniteness Of breezy laughter, as in youthful mirth, To hear Earth's sons and daughters praising Earth.”

II.

Whereupon a child began With spirit running up to man As by angels' s.h.i.+ning ladder, (May he find no cloud above!) Seeming he had ne'er been sadder All his days than now, Sitting in the chestnut grove, With that joyous overflow Of smiling from his mouth o'er brow And cheek and chin, as if the breeze Leaning tricksy from the trees To part his golden hairs, had blown Into an hundred smiles that one.

III.

”O rare, rare Earth!” he saith, ”I will praise thee presently; Not to-day; I have no breath: I have hunted squirrels three-- Two ran down in the furzy hollow Where I could not see nor follow, One sits at the top of the filbert-tree, With a yellow nut and a mock at me: Presently it shall be done!

When I see which way these two have run, When the mocking one at the filbert-top Shall leap a-down and beside me stop, Then, rare Earth, rare Earth, Will I pause, having known thy worth, To say all good of thee!”

IV.

Next a lover,--with a dream 'Neath his waking eyelids hidden, And a frequent sigh unbidden, And an idlesse all the day Beside a wandering stream, And a silence that is made Of a word he dares not say,-- Shakes slow his pensive head: ”Earth, Earth!” saith he, ”If spirits, like thy roses, grew On one stalk, and winds austere Could but only blow them near, To share each other's dew;-- If, when summer rains agree To beautify thy hills, I knew Looking off them I might see Some one very beauteous too,-- Then Earth,” saith he, ”I would praise ... nay, nay--not _thee_!”

V.

Will the pedant name her next?

Crabbed with a crabbed text Sits he in his study nook, With his elbow on a book, And with stately crossed knees, And a wrinkle deeply thrid Through his lowering brow, Caused by making proofs enow That Plato in ”Parmenides”

Meant the same Spinoza did,-- Or, that an hundred of the groping Like himself, had made one Homer, _Homeros_ being a misnomer What hath _he_ to do with praise Of Earth or aught? Whene'er the sloping Sunbeams through his window daze His eyes off from the learned phrase, Straightway he draws close the curtain.

May abstraction keep him dumb!

Were his lips to ope, 't is certain ”_Derivatum est_” would come.

VI.

Then a mourner moveth pale In a silence full of wail, Raising not his sunken head Because he wandered last that way With that one beneath the clay: Weeping not, because that one, The only one who would have said ”Cease to weep, beloved!” has gone Whence returneth comfort none.

The silence breaketh suddenly,-- ”Earth, I praise thee!” crieth he, ”Thou hast a grave for also _me_.”

VII.

Ha, a poet! know him by The ecstasy-dilated eye, Not uncharged with tears that ran Upward from his heart of man; By the cheek, from hour to hour, Kindled bright or sunken wan With a sense of lonely power; By the brow uplifted higher Than others, for more low declining By the lip which words of fire Overboiling have burned white While they gave the nations light: Ay, in every time and place Ye may know the poet's face By the shade or s.h.i.+ning.

VIII.

'Neath a golden cloud he stands, Spreading his impa.s.sioned hands.

”O G.o.d's Earth!” he saith, ”the sign From the Father-soul to mine Of all beauteous mysteries, Of all perfect images Which, divine in His divine, In my human only are Very excellent and fair!

Think not, Earth, that I would raise Weary forehead in thy praise, (Weary, that I cannot go Farther from thy region low,) If were struck no richer meanings From thee than thyself. The leaning Of the close trees o'er the brim Of a suns.h.i.+ne-haunted stream Have a sound beneath their leaves, Not of wind, not of wind, Which the poet's voice achieves: The faint mountains, heaped behind, Have a falling on their tops, Not of dew, not of dew, Which the poet's fancy drops: Viewless things his eyes can view Driftings of his dream do light All the skies by day and night, And the seas that deepest roll Carry murmurs of his soul.

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