SYMPATHIES

THE snows that glittered on the disk of Mars

Have melted, and the planet's fiery orb

Rolls in the crimson summer of its year;

But what to me the summer or the snow

Of worlds that throb with life in forms unknown,

If life indeed be theirs; I heed not these.

My heart is simply human; all my care

For them whose dust is fashioned like mine own;

These ache with cold and hunger, live in pain,

And shake with fear of worlds more full of woe;

There may be others worthier of my love,

But such I know not save through these I know.

There are two veils of language, hid beneath

Whose sheltering folds, we dare to be ourselves;

And not that other self which nods and smiles

And babbles in our name; the one is Prayer,

Lending its licensed freedom to the tongue

That tells our sorrows and our sins to Heaven;

The other, Verse, that throws its spangled web

Around our naked speech and makes it bold.

I, whose best prayer is silence; sitting dumb

In the great temple where I nightly serve

Him who is throned in light, have dared to claim

The poet's franchise, though I may not hope

To wear his garland; hear me while I tell

My story in such form as poets use,

But breathed in fitful whispers, as the wind

Sighs and then slumbers, wakes and sighs again.

Thou Vision, floating in the breathless air

Between me and the fairest of the stars,

I tell my lonely thoughts as unto thee.

Look not for marvels of the scholar's pen

In my rude measure; I can only show

A slender-margined, unillumined page,

And trust its meaning to the flattering eye

That reads it in the gracious light of love.

Ah, wouldst thou clothe thyself in breathing shape

And nestle at my side, my voice should lend

Whate'er my verse may lack of tender rhythm

To make thee listen.

I have stood entranced

When, with her fingers wandering o'er the keys,

The white enchantress with the golden hair

Breathed all her soul through some unvalued rhyme;

Some flower of song that long had lost its bloom;

Lo! its dead summer kindled as she sang!

The sweet contralto, like the ringdove's coo,

Thrilled it with brooding, fond, caressing tones,

And the pale minstrel's passion lived again,

Tearful and trembling as a dewy rose

The wind has shaken till it fills the air

With light and fragrance. Such the wondrous charm

A song can borrow when the bosom throbs

That lends it breath.

So from the poet's lips

His verse sounds doubly sweet, for none like him

Feels every cadence of its wave-like flow;

He lives the passion over, while he reads,

That shook him as he sang his lofty strain,

And pours his life through each resounding line,

As ocean, when the stormy winds are hushed,

Still rolls and thunders through his billowy caves.