LITMIR.BIZ

        Oh, let me not die young,

        A brother unclaimed among

        The countless millions of thy happy flock,

        Whose deepest joy is to obey,

        Whereby they feel the measured sway

        Of thy life in them, their own living part,

        Whether in centuried pulses of the rock

        By slow disintegration

        Ascending to its higher,

        Or the quick fluttering of the Storm-god's heart,—

        An instant's palpitation

        Through all its arteries of fire!

        One common blood runs down life's myriad veins,

        From Archangelic Hierarchs who float

        Broad-winged in the God-glory, to the mote

        That trembles with a braided dance

        In the warm sunset's vivid glance;

        And one great Heart that boundless flow sustains!

        In all the creatures of thy hand divine

        Thy love-light is a living guest,

        Whether a petal's palm confine

        Its glitter to a lily's breast,

        Or in unbounded space a starry line

        Stretches, till flagging Thought must droop her wing to rest.

        Oh, let me not die young,

        A powerless child among

        The ancient grandeurs of thy awful world!

        I catch some fragment of the mighty song

        Which, ere to darkness hurled,

        My elder brothers in the eternal throng

        Have caught before,—

        Faint murmurs of the surge,

        The deep, surrounding, everlasting roar

        Of a life-ocean without port or shore,—

        Ere I depart, compelled to urge

        My fragile bark with trembling from the verge

        Of this Earth-island, into that Unknown,

        Where worlds, like souls forlorn, go wandering alone!

        Oh, let me not die young,

        With all that song unsung,

        A swift and voiceless fugitive,

        From darkness coming and in darkness lost,

        Before thy solemn Pentecost,

        Dawning within the soul, shall give

        The burning utterance of its flaming tongue,—

        The boon whereby to other souls we live!

        Thy worlds are flashing with immortal splendor,

        For human speech on heights of human song

        Faintly to render,

        And pour back along

        Its mountain grandeur, the accumulate rain

        Of star-light, dream-light, thoughts of joy and pain,

        Of love, hate, right and wrong,

        In floods of utterance sublime and strong,

        In dewy effluence beautiful and tender.

        The kindred darknesses

        Of caverned earth and fathomless thought,

        Of Life and Death, and their twin mysteries,

        Before and After, on my spirit press

        Tempting and awful, with high promise fraught,

        And guardian terrors, whose out-flashing swords

        Beleaguer Paradise and the holy Tree

        Sciential. Step by step the way is fought

        That leads from Darkness, through her miscreant hordes,

        Back to the heavens of wise, and true, and free:

        Minerva's Gorgon, Ammon's cyclic Asp,

        And the fierce flame-sword of the Cherubim,

        That flashed like hate across the pallid gasp

        Of exiled Eve and Adam, flare, and glare,

        And hiss venenate, round the steps of him

        Who thirsts for heavenly Wisdom, if he dare

        Climb to her bosom, or with artless grasp

        Pluck the sweet fruits that hang around him, ripe and fair.

        Oh! glorious Youth

        Is the true age of prophecy, when Truth

        Stands bared in beauty, and the young blood boils

        To hurl us in her arms, before the blur

        Of time makes dim her rounded form,

        Or the cold blood recoils

        From the polluted swarm

        Of armed Chimeras that environ her.

        But worthy Age to ripened fruit shall bring

        The glorious blooming of its hopeful spring,

        And pile the garners of immortal Truth

        With sheaves of golden grain,

        To sow the world again,

        And fill the eager wants of the New Age's youth.

        A thousand flashes of uncertain light

        Cleave

Скачать книгу