WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS

ANOTHER clouded night; the stars are hid,

The orb that waits my search is hid with them.

Patience! Why grudge an hour, a month, a year,

To plant my ladder and to gain the round

That leads my footsteps to the heaven of fame,

Where waits the wreath my sleepless midnights won?

Not the stained laurel such as heroes wear

That withers when some stronger conqueror's heel

Treads down their shrivelling trophies in the dust;

But the fair garland whose undying green

Not time can change, nor wrath of gods or men!

With quickened heart-beats I shall hear tongues

That speak my praise; but better far the sense

That in the unshaped ages, buried deep

In the dark mines of unaccomplished time

Yet to be stamped with morning's royal die

And coined in golden days,— in those dim years

I shall be reckoned with the undying dead,

My name emblazoned on the fiery arch,

Unfading till the stars themselves shall fade.

Then, as they call the roll of shining worlds,

Sages of race unborn in accents new

Shall count me with the Olympian ones of old,

Whose glories kindle through the midnight sky

Here glows the God of Battles; this recalls

The Lord of Ocean, and yon far-off sphere

The Sire of Him who gave his ancient name

To the dim planet with the wondrous rings;

Here flames the Queen of Beauty's silver lamp,

And there the moon-girt orb of mighty Jove;

But this, unseen through all earth's ions past,

A youth who watched beneath the western star

Sought in the darkness, found, and shewed to men;

Linked with his name thenceforth and evermore

So shall that name be syllabled anew

In all the tongues of all the tribes of men:

I that have been through immemorial years

Dust in the dust of my forgotten time

Shall live in accents shaped of blood-warm breath,

Yea, rise in mortal semblance, newly born

In shining stone, in undecaying bronze,

And stand on high, and look serenely down

On the new race that calls the earth its own.

Is this a cloud, that, blown athwart my soul,

Wears a false seeming of the pearly stain

Where worlds beyond the world their mingling rays

Blend in soft white,— a cloud that, born of earth,

Would cheat the soul that looks for light from heaven?

Must every coral-insect leave his sign

On each poor grain he lent to build the reef,

As Babel's builders stamped their sunburnt clay,

Or deem his patient service all in vain?

What if another sit beneath the shade

Of the broad elm I planted by the way,—

What if another heed the beacon light

I set upon the rock that wrecked my keel,—

Have I not done my task and served my kind?

Nay, rather act thy part, unnamed, unknown,

And let Fame blow her trumpet through the world

With noisy wind to swell a fool's renown,

Joined with some truth he stumbled blindly o'er,

Or coupled with some single shining deed

That in the great account of all his days

Will stand alone upon the bankrupt sheet

His pitying angel shows the clerk of Heaven.

The noblest service comes from nameless hands,

And the best servant does his work unseen.

Who found the seeds of fire and made them shoot,

Fed by his breath, in buds and flowers of flame?

Who forged in roaring flames the ponderous stone,

And shaped the moulded metal to his need?

Who gave the dragging car its rolling wheel,

And tamed the steed that whirls its circling round?

All these have left their work and not their names,—

Why should I murmur at a fate like theirs?

This is the heavenly light; the pearly stain

Was but a wind-cloud drifting o'er the stars!