Ii

Ocean of Life! Mysterious ferry Upon whose silent breast the barques Flit swift and noiselessly; as sparks Blown from magician’s forge; as mote Of city dust; as things which float Deep down some ancient forest’s shade, Where, peering through its dusky glade, Circles on circles eddying start, And still the teeming atoms part And meet, and part again, until The thronging myriads crowding still Seem to invest the brain--possess, It with the sense of fruitlessness Of fevered rush, of frenzied strain Whose life is toil, whose end is pain.

Then off! small brother-elves, we say Hence with your idle pranks, away! Let rather silence obdurate, Rock palaces, severe as fate, Brown deserts, or the entrenchant gloom Of vacant cities, which some doom Leaves naked to the wolves; let them, And such as they their spells essay; So gloom on gloom its powers may try In dull discordant rivalry, Mates of the worm and tomb; not you Gay playthings of the sun and wind, Too long familiar and too kind.

Yet Life’s warm garment closest clings When most we strive to strip it; flings Its mantle round us; ever tries Fresh hues, fresh modes to tempt our eyes! For listen, life of rock and hill, Your secret is your secret still; From yonder crag thin-peaked and grey, Cold even in this noontide ray, To yon bejewelled living thing, Darting along on viewless wing, From lichens fine as dryad’s hair, To cliffs high bathed in cloudless air, From dust-speck to imperial sky You all are strangers; and we die And never know you. Full and free You quaff the cup of mystery, Of your own fate the only lord, We see the scabbard, but the sword Has never gleamed before our eyes; Its hidden scrolls, its blazonries, Are all to us as strange and new As if nor we, nor they, nor you Had in one lot a common share, Or breathed the self-same vital air.

Launched on your pleasant dreamless tide You sweep along, or fearless glide, While we, with sobs of toil and pain Struggle Discovery’s heights to gain. Till tip-toe on some peak we scan The vast, the immeasurable plan, Yet neither clue nor meaning find, Till ever seeking, ever blind, Caught by some ’whelming wave we roll, To the same vast eternal goal.