Our Home

Our home has not the ugly clamoring Nor the dumb stillness of the other homes About and opposite. For in our home Rare birds sing forth uncommon melodies; And in our home-yard a young offshoot grows, Sprung from Dodona's tree oracular! And in the garden of our home, full thick, The ironworts and snakeroots blossom on; And in our home the magic mirror shines Reflecting always in its gleaming glass The visage of the world thrice-wonderful!

The silence of our home is full of moans, Moans vague and muffled from a distant world Of bygone ages and of times unborn; And in our home souls come to life and die. Blossom from blossom blossoms forth and fades! Old men have the white, rich, Levitic beard, The foreheads wide of solemn contemplation, The wrath of prophets, and the fleeting calm And chilling threatfulness of the gray shadows.

Glowing with love-heat like resistless Satyrs, The young men in the mind's most shady glades Hunt ardently the bride that is pure thought. The children drop their playthings carelessly, And, standing in a corner motionless, Open their eyes in thought like men full-grown. And all, ancestors and descendants, young Or old, have ways that challenge ridicule And have the word that bursting forth makes slaves!

But still more beautiful and pure than these, An harmony fit for the chosen few Fills with its ringing sounds our dwelling place, A lightning sent from Sinai and a gleam From great Olympus, like the mingling sounds Of David's harp and Pindar's lyre conversing In the star-spangled darkness of the night.