I

It is not winter yet, but that sweet time

In autumn when the first cool days are past;

A week ago, the leaves were hoar with rime,

And some have dropped before the North wind's blast;

But the mild hours are back, and at mid-noon,

The day hath all the genial warmth of June.

What slender form lies stretched along the mound?

Can it be his, the Wanderer's, with that brow

Gray in its prime, those eyes that wander round

Listlessly, with a jaded glance that now

Seems to see nothing where it rests, and then

Pores on each trivial object in its ken?

See how a gentle maid's wan fingers clasp

The last fond love-notes of some faithless hand;

Thus, with a transient interest, his weak grasp

Holds a few leaves as when of old he scanned

The meaning in their gold and crimson streaks;

But the sweet dream has vanished! hush! he speaks!

“Once more, once more, after long pain and toil,

And yet not long, if I should count by years,

I breathe my native air, and tread the soil

I trod in childhood; if I shed no tears,

No happy tears,‘ t is that their fount is dry,

And joy that cannot weep must sigh, must sigh.

“These leaves, my boyish books in days of yore,

When, as the weeks sped by, I seemed to stand

Ever upon the brink of some wild lore —

These leaves shall make my bed, and — for the hand

Of God is on me, chilling brain and breath —

I shall not ask a softer couch in death.

“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?

“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.

“So fell my voice amid the whirl and rush

Of human passions; 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.

“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 passed me by.

“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 passed

From all that youth had dreamed or manhood planned,

Into the self that none would understand.

“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.

“Clay to its kindred clay! I loved, in sooth,

Too deeply and too purely to be blest;

With something more of lust 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 God! draws near!”

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.

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!

“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 passions wait

Upon the genuine bard, to him belong,

And help in their own way the Poet's song.

“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

“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.

“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.

“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.

“Not thus the Poet, who in blood and brain

Would represent his race and speak for all,

Weaves the bright woof of that impassioned 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.

“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 passions, and all life almost

In its wide circle. Like some noble host,

“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 passion for the earnest youth;

Wisdom for all; and when it seeks relief,

Tears, and their solace for the heart of grief.

“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;

“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.

“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.

“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.

“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 God — the gate of birth

Closed on a dreamless ignorance of earth.

“And therefore, though thy name shall pass away,

Even as a cloud that hath wept all its showers,

Yet as that cloud shall live again one day

In the glad grass, and in the happy flowers,

So in thy thoughts, though clothed in sweeter rhymes,

Thy life shall bear its flowers in future times.”