swamps, build dams and mills, And fit the bleak and howling waste For homes of virtue, sense and taste. The World-soul knows his own affair, Forelooking, when he would prepare For the next ages, men of mould Well embodied, well ensouled, He cools the present's fiery glow, Sets the life-pulse strong but slow: Bitter winds and fasts austere His quarantines and grottoes, where He slowly cures decrepit flesh, And brings it infantile and fresh. Toil and tempest are the toys And games to breathe his stalwart boys: They bide their time, and well can prove, If need were, their line from Jove; Of the same stuff, and so allayed, As that whereof the sun is made, And of the fibre, quick and strong, Whose throbs are love, whose thrills are song. Now in sordid weeds they sleep, In dulness now their secret keep; Yet, will you learn our ancient speech, These the masters who can teach. Fourscore or a hundred words All their vocal muse affords; But they turn them in a fashion Past clerks' or statesmen's art or passion. I can spare the college bell, And the learned lecture, well; Spare the clergy and libraries, Institutes and dictionaries, For that hardy English root Thrives here, unvalued, underfoot. Rude poets of the tavern hearth, Squandering your unquoted mirth, Which keeps the ground and never soars, While Jake retorts and Reuben roars; Scoff of yeoman strong and stark, Goes like bullet to its mark; While the solid curse and jeer Never balk the waiting ear. On the summit as I stood, O'er the floor of plain and flood Seemed to me, the towering hill Was not altogether still, But a quiet sense conveyed: If I err not, thus it said:— 'Many feet in summer seek, Oft, my far-appearing peak; In the dreaded winter time, None save dappling shadows climb, Under clouds, my lonely head, Old as the sun, old almost as the shade; And comest thou To see strange forests and new snow, And tread uplifted land? And leavest thou thy lowland race, Here amid clouds to stand? And wouldst be my companion Where I gaze, and still shall gaze, Through tempering nights and flashing days, When forests fall, and man is gone, Over tribes and over times, At the burning Lyre, Nearing me, With its stars of northern fire, In many a thousand years? 'Gentle pilgrim, if thou know The gamut old of Pan, And how the hills began, The frank blessings of the hill Fall on thee, as fall they will. 'Let him heed who can and will;
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