The Renewal

No more of sorrow, the world's old distress,

Nor war of thronging spirits numberless,

Immortal ardours in brief days confined,

No more the languid fever of mankind

To--day I sing: 'tis no melodious pain

Cries in me: a full note, a rapturous strain

My voice adventures. Tremblest thou, my heart,

Because so eagerly the bliss would start

Up from thy fountains? O be near to me,

Thou that upliftest, thou that sett'st me free!

Out of the dim vault and the dying hues

Of Autumn, that for every wanderer strews

On silent paths the perishing pale leaves,

Fallen, like thoughts the heart no more believes,

From blackened branches to the frozen ground:

Out of the multitudinous dim sound

Of millions, to each other all unknown,

Warring together on the alien stone

Of streets unnumbered; where with drooping head

Prisoners pass, by unseen tyrants led

And with inaudible manacles oppressed,

Where he who listens cannot ever rest

For hearing in his heart the cry of men,

His brothers, from their lamentable den;

Out of all these I come to this sweet waste

Of woods and waters, and the odour taste

Of pines in sunshine hearkening to the roar

Of ocean on his solitary shore;

Lone beaches, where the yellow poppy blows

Unplucked, and where the wind for ever flows

Over the heathy desert; where the sea

Sparkles afar into infinity;

And the cleared spirit, tasting all things clean,

Rejoices, as if grief had never been;

Where thou, to whom the birds and the waves sing,

By some enchantment hast restored the Spring.

As when a dear hand touches on the hair

And thrills away the heaviness of care,

Till the world changes and through a window bright

The upleaping spirit gazes in delight,

Over my brain I feel a calming hand;

I look upon sweet earth and understand:

I hear the loud wind laughing through the trees;

The nimble air my limbs encourages,

And I upraise my songs afresh begun,

A palinode to the triumphant sun.

But thou, from whom into my soul to--day

Enters a quivering glory, ray on ray,

O by thine eyes a sister of the Spring,

Striking a core of sweetness in each thing

Thou look'st on, till it blossoms! By thy voice,

Soul of all souls created to rejoice!

Thou that with native overbrimming sense

Takest the light of Beauty's effluence,

As from the morning, in May's festal prime,

The young green leaves of the swift--budded lime;

That drawest all glad things, they know not why,

By some dear magnet of felicity;

And mournful spirits from their yoke of pain

Enchantest, till they lift their necks again,

And looking in thy bright and gentle eyes

To thee devote their dearest enterprise;

Thou whose brave heart could its own pain consume

And turn to deeper tenderness; in whom

Looks, thoughts, and motions, speech and mien persuade,

Immortal Joy hath his own mansion made:

How shall my too full heart, my stammering tongue,

Render thee half the song which thou hast sung

Into my being, by no web of words

Hindered, and fluid as the note of birds?

Or tell what magic of sweet air is shed

On me, so radiantly comforted?

I need each beam of the young sun; I need

Each draught of the pure wind, whereon to feed

My joy; each sparkle of the dew that shines

Under your branches, dark, sun--drunken pines,

All voices, motions of the unwearied sea;

But most, O tender spirit, I need thee.

For thou to this dumb beauty art the tone

It fain would render; all that is thine own

Of wayward and most human and most sweet

Mingling, until the music be complete:

Thine accents, O adorable and dear,

Command me to rejoice and have no fear;

Out of remembrance wash the soil of pain

And medicine me to my own self again.

Muse of my quickened verse, I am as he

Who, striving in the vast up--swollen sea,

Lifted a moment on a wave, descries

Unrolling suddenly the boundless skies.

Now is mere breathing joy; and all that strife

Confused and darkling, that we miscall life,

Is as a cloak, cast off in the warm spring.

Thus to possess the sunlight, is a thing

Worth more than our ambitions; more than ease

Wrung from the despot labour, the stale lees

Of youthful bliss: more than the plotting mind

Can ever compass, or the heart can find

In wisest books or multitude of friends.

For this it is that brings us to the lap

Of bounteous Earth, and fills us with her sap

And early laughter; melts the petty ends

Of daily striving into boundless air,

Revealing to the soul what it can dare:

Frees and enriches thousandfold; and steeps

This trembling self in universal deeps;

Lends it the patience of the eternal hills

To bear, no more in solitude, its ills,

And with all fervours of the world inspires

Its re--awakened and divine desires.

This is it that can find the deepest root

In us, and urge unto the fairest fruit,

Persuading the shut soul, that hid in night,

To crowd its blissful leaves into the light,

And shed, upon the lost, immortal seeds:

Kindles into a forge of fiery deeds

The smouldering heart, and closes the long wound

Of gentle spirits by rough time untuned;

And, O more precious even yet than this,

Empowers our weakness to support in bliss

The immensity of love, to love in vain

Yet still to hunger for that priceless pain;

To love without a bound, to set no end

To our long love, never aside to bend

In loving, but pour forth in living streams

Our hearts, as the full morn his quenchless beams.

He that this light hath tasted, asks no more

Dim questions answerless, that have so sore

Perplexed our thinking: in his bosom flow

Springs of all knowledge he hath need to know.

Nor vaunts he the secure philosophy

Self--throned, that would so easily untie

The knot of this hard world: and judging straight

Pronounce its essence and declare its fate.

How should the universal heart be known

To him that can so hardly read his own?

For where is he that can the inmost speak

Of his own being? Words are blind and weak,

Perplexing phantoms, dim as smoke to fire,

Mocking our tears, and torturing our desire,

When soul with soul would mingle: even Love

Never availed yet, howsoe'er he strove,

But, like the moon, to yield one radiant part

To the dark longing of the embracing heart.

And Earth, shall her vast secret open lie

Before the brief gaze of mortality?

Yet wayward and self--wise, no sooner stept

Into the world, and a few troubles wept,

A few unripe joys garnered, a few sins

Experienced, the impetuous mind begins

Its hasty wisdom; the world's griefs and joys

Holds in a balance, and essays to poise.

O persevering folly! never sleep

Must weigh the lids of that soul who would reap

This mystery; deserts vast must she explore,

Many far towns, many an unguessed shore,

And those deep regions search, more desolate far,

Where lives are herded, ignorant what they are,

And scarcely disentangling joy from woe;

Their being must she put on, if she would know

Humanity; most private bliss invade,

And with extremest terror be afraid,

Blank quiet and fierce rages apprehend.

Nor less into the leaping air ascend

Of flame--like spirits, and enamoured veins

Feel pulse in her; to exquisitest pains

Surrender. Then must her fleet impulse find

A way into the solitary mind

Of creatures, that in thousand thousand forms

Dumb life inspires and a brief sunshine warms;

And into the blind springs of sap and seed

Empty her passion, helpless with their need,

Torn with their hunger, thirsting with their thirst;

And deeper, whither eye hath never pierced,

Search out, amid the unsleeping stir that fills

Caves of old ocean and the rooted hills,

Whether indeed these streams of being flow

From inmost joy or a great core of woe.

Not until then is her wide errand sped,

Nor even so the supreme verdict said.

For far into the outer night must fare

The uncompleted spirit, that to dare

Has but begun: now her commissioned bark

She must adventure on an ocean dark,

Illumined only by the driving foam

Of stars imprisoned in the invisible home

Each of his circle; age be lost in age

Ere she accomplish half her pilgrimage;

Nor till the last of those uncounted spheres

Its incommunicable joys and tears

Yield up to her, shall she at length return

And homeward heavy with the message burn,

And to her wonder--waiting peers rehearse

The mighty meaning of the Universe.

O lovely Joy! and sweet Necessity,

That wakes, empowers, and impassions me,

It is enough that this illumined hour

I feel my own life open like a flower

Within me. Whether the worlds ache or no,

Wearing a bright mask over breasts of woe,

I have no need to learn; I only gaze

Into thine eyes, dear spirit, that dost upraise

My spirit; thy bright eyes, that never cease

To thrill me with soft moon--like beams of peace.

I look in them as into Earth's own eyes;

Faith instantly my longing fortifies;

And now I think no single day has hours,

Nor year has days, nor life has years, for powers

Of joy sufficing; for the things begun

And waiting to be seen and felt and done.

O give me all thy pains, let them be mine,

And keep alone beloved delight for thine!

I have a flame within me shall transmute

All to an ash, that shall bear flower and fruit,

While thou look'st on me, while from thee there flows

The invisible strength that in my spirit grows,

Until like Spring, the blissful prodigal,

It burns as it were capable of all

That ever could be reached, enjoyed, or won,

Or known, or suffered, underneath the sun.

But O why tarry we in language vain

And speak thus dimly of delight and pain?

Those human words have fallen out of sense,

Drunk up into intenser elements,

As colours perish into perfect light.

Now in the visitation of swift sight

That makes me for this happy moment wise

Beyond all wisdom of philosophies,

I feel even through this transitory flesh

The pang of my creation dart afresh;

The bonds of thought fall off, and I am free;

There is no longer grief nor joy for me,

But one infinity of life that flows

From the deep ocean--heart that no man knows

Out into these unnumbered semblances

Of earth and air, mountains and beasts and trees,

One timeless flood which drives the circling star

In furthest heaven, and whose weak waves we are,

Mortal and broken oft in sobbing foam,

Yet ever children of that central home,

Our Peace, that even as we flee, we find;

The Road that is before us and behind,

By which we travel from ourselves, in sleep

Or waking, toward a self more vast and deep.

O could my voice but sound to all the earth

And bring thy tidings, radiant One, to birth

In hearts of men! How would they cast away

The shroud that wraps them from the spacious day,

Burst the strong meshes they themselves have spun

Of idle cares, and step into the sun,

And see, and feel, and dedicate no more

Their travail to some far imagined shore,

Some dreamed--of goal beyond life's eager sphere,

For lo! at every hour the goal is here;

And as the dark woods tremble to the morn,

That shoots into their dewy depths forlorn

Along the wind's path bright victorious rays,

And in all branches the birds lift their praise,

So should they sing, rejoicing to be free,

As I, belovèd Muse, rejoice in thee.