Chapter LIII

Then Elbert laugh’d. “Ah, were you but a bow,
Your bending most would shoot most.—Not a priest?
A man alone?—You yet a brother are
To many a soul that sails the sea of life,
Where oft the horizon trembles with the change
Of wind and wave; and hope, too hale, oft mourns
Fair promises, like skies that fade in fog.
A man alone?—And yet the moods of man
May make men love us for our manliness,
Who draw them, Christ-like through our sympathy,
Toward self,—God’s image here, and thus toward Him.”

“But draw them how?” I cried. “Woe me, I stand,
A poet born, who deem’d his Muse had fled;
That time and trouble had a stone roll’d up,
Her sweet form sealing in their sepulchre.
And yet one breath of love could rouse the dead.
All day the subtle spirit haunts me now,
Thrill’d through and through to sound her sweetness forth.”

“Then let it sound!” he said. “Rare rest it were,
Were all one’s recreation freshen’d thus;
And slumber serenaded by the Muse.”

“One’s recreation! slumber!” I exclaim’d;
“Is mind a deep that wells with most of thought
When void the most? I tell you none can draw
A truthful inspiration save from truth.
The poet’s ken may people heaven like clouds,
All phantom shaped, and splendid as their sun;
But all his fairest forms were vapors first
That heaven drew, mist-like, from the earth beneath.
Thought decks itself in holiday attire,—
Turns fantasy,—to expend the inertia large
Of large reserves of philosophic force,
Forced into play, the night’s dream opening where
The day’s work closes.”
“Close work thus,” he said;
“And all the measures of your verse may show
How sweet can be the echoes waked anon
By labor’s ringing anvil.”
“Nay,” I sigh’d.
“Such work would bring too much of sleep,—no dreams.
When born with souls like harps the Muse would play,
What better can men do than toil to keep
Their thoughts and feelings close in tune with truth?
For this will tax them wholly. They, who try,
With those few strings that fate has given to them,
To play all parts of all the orchestra
Will help the play of no part. We are men;
And straight and narrow must our pathways be.
If, Adam-like, we would be gods, we fall.
Not given to mortal is the life supreme,
In naught unbalanced, laden light in naught,
Existence evermore at equipoise,
Complete with that which on itself depends.
Oft, who his worth would double, nothing does
Except to break the back of worth that was,
While doubled burdens fall to doubled waste.
We men should humbler be, and pray to heaven
To have horizons hanging nearer us.
Our views too broad unfit us for the earth,
Yet fit us not for loneliness divine,—
The wide chill chaos, back behind the stars.”