Asia's rancor, Athens' art, Slowsure Britain's secular might, And the German's inward sight. I will give my son to eat Best of Pan's immortal meat, Bread to eat, and juice to drain; So the coinage of his brain Shall not be forms of stars, but stars, Nor pictures pale, but Jove and Mars, He comes, but not of that race bred Who daily climb my specular head. Oft as morning wreathes my scarf, Fled the last plumule of the Dark, Pants up hither the spruce clerk From South Cove and City Wharf. I take him up my rugged sides, Half-repentant, scant of breath,— Bead-eyes my granite chaos show, And my midsummer snow: Open the daunting map beneath,— All his county, sea and land, Dwarfed to measure of his hand; His day's ride is a furlong space, His city-tops a glimmering haze. I plant his eyes on the sky-hoop bounding; "See there the grim gray rounding Of the bullet of the earth Whereon ye sail, Tumbling steep In the uncontinented deep." He looks on that, and he turns pale. 'T is even so, this treacherous kite, Farm-furrowed, town-incrusted sphere, Thoughtless of its anxious freight, Plunges eyeless on forever; And he, poor parasite, Cooped in a ship he cannot steer,— Who is the captain he knows not, Port or pilot trows not,— Risk or ruin he must share. I scowl on him with my cloud, With my north wind chill his blood; I lame him, clattering down the rocks; And to live he is in fear. Then, at last, I let him down Once more into his dapper town, To chatter, frightened, to his clan And forget me if he can.' As in the old poetic fame The gods are blind and lame, And the simular despite Betrays the more abounding might, So call not waste that barren cone Above the floral zone, Where forests starve: It is pure use;— What sheaves like those which here we glean and bind Of a celestial Ceres and the Muse? Ages are thy days, Thou grand affirmer of the present tense, And type of permanence! Firm ensign of the fatal Being, Amid these coward shapes of joy and grief, That will not bide the seeing! Hither we bring Our insect miseries to thy rocks; And the whole flight, with folded wing, Vanish, and end their murmuring,— Vanish beside these dedicated blocks, Which who can tell what mason laid? Spoils of a front none need restore, Replacing frieze and architrave;— Where flowers each stone rosette and metope brave; Still is the haughty pile erect Of the old building Intellect. Complement of human kind,
Prev.
Back
Top