Chapter I

Sit here and muse!--it is an antique room--
High-roof'd, with casements, through whose purple pane
Unwilling Daylight steals amidst the gloom,
Shy as a fearful stranger.
There THEY reign
(In loftier pomp than waking life had known),
The Kings of Thought!--not crown'd until the grave.
When Agamemnon sinks into the tomb,
The beggar Homer mounts the Monarch's throne!
Ye ever-living and imperial Souls,
Who rule us from the page in which ye breathe,
All that divide us from the clod ye gave!--
Law--Order--Love--Intelligence--the Sense
Of Beauty--Music and the Minstrel's wreath!--
What were our wanderings if without your goals?
As air and light, the glory ye dispense
Becomes our being--who of us can tell
What he had been, had Cadmus never taught
The art that fixes into form the thought--
Had Plato never spoken from his cell,
Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?
Kinder all earth hath grown since genial Shakspere sung!