The Poems Of Henry Timrod Part 15

"Here was it that I saw, or dreamed I saw, I know not which, that shape of love and light.

Spirit of Song! have I not owned thy law?

Have I not taught, or striven to teach the right, And kept my heart as clean, my life as sweet, As mortals may, when mortals mortals meet?

VII

"Thou know'st how I went forth, my youthful breast On fire with thee, amid the paths of men; Once in my wanderings, my lone footsteps pressed A mountain forest; in a sombre glen, Down which its thundrous boom a cataract flung, A little bird, unheeded, built and sung.

VIII

"So fell my voice amid the whirl and rush Of human pa.s.sions; if unto my art Sorrow hath sometimes owed a gentler gush, I know it not; if any Poet-heart Hath kindled at my songs its light divine, I know it not; no ray came back to mine.

IX

"Alone in crowds, once more I sought to make Of senseless things my friends; the clouds that burn Above the sunset, and the flowers that shake Their odors in the wind--these would not turn Their faces from me; far from cities, I Forgot the scornful world that pa.s.sed me by.

X

"Yet even the world's cold slights I might have borne, Nor fled, though sorrowing; but I shrank at last When one sweet face, too sweet, I thought, for scorn, Looked scornfully upon me; then I pa.s.sed From all that youth had dreamed or manhood planned, Into the self that none would understand.

XI

"She was--I never wronged her womanhood By crowning it with praises not her own-- She was all earth's, and earth's, too, in that mood When she brings forth her fairest; I atone Now, in this fading brow and failing frame, That such a soul such soul as mine could tame.

XII

"Clay to its kindred clay! I loved, in sooth, Too deeply and too purely to be blest; With something more of l.u.s.t and less of truth She would have sunk all blushes on my breast; And--but I must not blame her--in my ear Death whispers! and the end, thank G.o.d! draws near!"

XIII

Hist! on the perfect silence of the place Comes and dies off a sound like far-off rain With voices mingled; on the Poet's face A shadow, where no shadow should have lain, Falls the next moment: nothing meets his sight, Yet something moves betwixt him and the light.

XIV

And a voice murmurs, "Wonder not, but hear!

ME to behold again thou need'st not seek; Yet by the dim-felt influence on the air, And by the mystic shadow on thy cheek, Know, though thou mayst not touch with fleshly hands, The genius of thy life beside thee stands!

XV

"Unto no fault, O weary-hearted one!

Unto no fault of man's thou ow'st thy fate; All human hearts that beat this earth upon, All human thoughts and human pa.s.sions wait Upon the genuine bard, to him belong, And help in their own way the Poet's song.

XVI

"How blame the world? for the world hast thou wrought?

Or wast thou but as one who aims to fling The weight of some unutterable thought Down like a burden? what from questioning Too subtly thy own spirit, and to speech But half subduing themes beyond the reach

XVII

"Of mortal reason; what from living much In that dark world of shadows, where the soul Wanders bewildered, striving still to clutch Yet never clutching once, a shadowy goal, Which always flies, and while it flies seems near, Thy songs were riddles hard to mortal ear.

XVIII

"This was the hidden selfishness that marred Thy teachings ever; this the false key-note That on such souls as might have loved thee jarred Like an unearthly language; thou didst float On a strange water; those who stood on land Gazed, but they could not leave their beaten strand.

XIX

"Your elements were different, and apart-- The world's and thine--and even in those intense And watchful broodings o'er thy inmost heart, It was thy own peculiar difference That thou didst seek; nor didst thou care to find Aught that would bring thee nearer to thy kind.

XX

"Not thus the Poet, who in blood and brain Would represent his race and speak for all, Weaves the bright woof of that impa.s.sioned strain Which drapes, as if for some high festival Of pure delights--whence few of human birth May rightly be shut out--the common earth.

XXI

"As the same law that moulds a planet, rounds A drop of dew, so the great Poet spheres Worlds in himself; no selfish limit bounds A sympathy that folds all characters, All ranks, all pa.s.sions, and all life almost In its wide circle. Like some n.o.ble host,

XXII

"He spreads the riches of his soul, and bids Partake who will. Age has its saws of truth, And love is for the maiden's drooping lids, And words of pa.s.sion for the earnest youth; Wisdom for all; and when it seeks relief, Tears, and their solace for the heart of grief.

XXIII

"Nor less on him than thee the mysteries Within him and about him ever weigh-- The meanings in the stars, and in the breeze, All the weird wonders of the common day, Truths that the merest point removes from reach, And thoughts that pause upon the brink of speech;

XXIV

"But on the surface of his song these lie As shadows, not as darkness; and alway, Even though it breathe the secrets of the sky, There is a human purpose in the lay; Thus some tall fir that whispers to the stars Shields at its base a cotter's lattice-bars.

XXV

"Even such my Poet! for thou still art mine!

Thou mightst have been, and now have calmly died, A priest, and not a victim at the shrine; Alas! yet was it all thy fault? I chide, Perchance, myself within thee, and the fate To which thy power was solely consecrate.

XXVI

"Thy life hath not been wholly without use, Albeit that use is partly hidden now; In thy unmingled scorn of any truce With this world's specious falsehoods, often thou Hast uttered, through some all unworldly song, Truths that for man might else have slumbered long.

XXVII

"And these not always vainly on the crowd Have fallen; some are cherished now, and some, In mystic phrases wrapped as in a shroud, Wait the diviner, who as yet is dumb Upon the breast of G.o.d--the gate of birth Closed on a dreamless ignorance of earth.

XXVIII

"And therefore, though thy name shall pa.s.s away, Even as a cloud that hath wept all its showers, Yet as that cloud shall live again one day In the glad gra.s.s, and in the happy flowers, So in thy thoughts, though clothed in sweeter rhymes, Thy life shall bear its flowers in future times."