He stood on the bare edge of dawn. She was gone,
Like a star, when up bay after bay of the night,
Ripples in, wave on wave, the broad ocean of light.
And at once, in her place, was the Sunrise! It rose
In its sumptuous splendour and solemn repose,
The supreme revelation of light.
Realms of rose, in the Orient!
Domes of gold,
And breathless, and bold,
While the great gates of heaven roll'd back one by one, The bright herald angel stood stern in the sun!
Thrice holy Eospheros! Light's reign began
In the heaven, on the earth, in the heart of the man.
The dawn on the mountains! the dawn everywhere!
Light! silence! the fresh innovations of air!
O earth, and O ether! A butterfly breeze
Floated up, flutter'd down, and poised blithe on the trees.
Through the revelling woods, o'er the sharp rippled stream,
Up the vale slow uncoiling itself out of dream,
Around the brown meadows, adown the hill slope,
The spirits of morning were whispering 'Hope!'
He uplifted his eyes. In the place where she stood
But a moment before, and where now roll'd the flood
Of the sunrise all golden, he seem'd to behold,
In the young light of sunrise, an image unfold
Of his own youth,-its ardours-its promise of fame-
Its ancestral ambition; and France by the name
Of his sires seem'd to call him. There, hover'd in light,
That image aloft, o'er the shapeless and bright
And Aurorean clouds, which themselves seem'd to be
Brilliant fragments of that golden world, wherein he
Had once dwelt, a native!
There, rooted and bound
To the earth, stood the man, gazing at it! Around
The rims of the sunrise it hover'd and shone
Transcendent, that type of a youth that was gone;
And he as the body may yearn for the soul,
So he yearn'd to embody that image. His whole
Heart arose to regain it.
No! for Time is a fiction, and limits not fate.
Thought alone is eternal. Time thralls it in vain.
For the thought that springs upward and yearns to regain
The pure source of spirit, there is no TOO LATE.
As the stream to its first mountain levels, elate
In the fountain arises, the spirit in him
Arose to that image. The image waned dim
Into heaven; and heavenward with it, to melt.
As it melted, in day's broad expansion, he felt
With a thrill, sweet and strange, and intense-awed, amazed-
Something soar and ascend in his soul, as he gazed.
MAN is born on a battle-field.
Or resist, the dread Powers he displaces attend,
By the cradle which Nature, amidst the stern shocks
That have shatter'd creation, and shapen it, rocks.
He leaps with a wail into being; and lo!
His own mother, fierce Nature herself, is his foe.
Her whirlwinds are roused into wrath o'er his head : 'Neath his feet roll her earthquakes: her solitudes spread To daunt him: her forces dispute his command:
Her snows fall to freeze him: her suns burn to brand: Her seas yawn to engulf him: her rocks rise to crush: And the lion and leopard, allied, lurk to rush
On their startled Invader.
Where the infinite forest spreads breathless and far,
'Mid the cruel of eye and the stealthy of claw
(Striped and spotted destroyers!) he sees, pale with awe,
On the menacing edge of a fiery sky
Grim Doorga, blue-limb'd and red-handed, go by,
And the first thing he worships is Terror.
Still impell'd by Necessity hungrily on,
He conquers the realms of his own self-reliance,
And the last cry of fear wakes the first of defiance.
From the serpent he crushes its poisonous soul:
Smitten down in his path see the dead lion roll!
On toward Heaven the son of Alcmena strides high on
The heads of the Hydra, the spoils of the lion:
And man, conquering Terror, is worshipp'd by man.
A camp has this world been since first it began!
From his tents sweeps the roving Arabian; at peace,
A mere wandering shepherd that follows the fleece;
But, warring his way through a world's destinies,
Lo from Delhi, from Bagdadt, from Cordova, rise
Domes of empiry, dower'd with silence and art,
Schools, libraries, forums, the palace, the mart!
New realms to man's soul have been conquer'd. But those,
Forthwith they are peopled for man by new foes!
The stars keep their secrets, the earth hides her own,
And bold must the man be that braves the Unknown!
Not a truth has to art or to science been given,
But brows have ached for it,
and souls toil'd and striven;
And many have striven, and many have fail'd,
And many died, slain by the truth they assail'd.
But when Man hath tamed Nature, asserted his place
And dominion, behold! he is brought face to face
With a new foe-himself!
Nor may man on his shield
Ever rest, for his foe is for ever afield,
Danger ever at hand, till the armèd Archangel
Sound o'er him the trump of earth's final evangel.
Silence straightway, stern Muse, the soft cymbals of pleasure,
Be all bronzen these numbers, and martial the measure!
Breathe, sonorously breathe, o'er the spirit in me
One strain, sad and stern, of that deep Epopee
Which thou, from the fashionless cloud of far time,
|