Classic Poem

'T IS dawn; nay, day-light certain; I know not
If bright or dull; but the white window shows
Difference from darkness, and the world goes round
In order, safe within the force of God,
And gentle light is sweet for its own sake.

A moment yet, fair day.—Within this force,
Calm in my very weakness, and desiring,
I trust, what it desires, do I awhile
Enclose me in a prayer of lovingness
For me, and for my friends, and all mankind.

Mine eyes re-open, blest. How well those birds,
The little angels of the trees, rejoin
One's consciousness of earth! What pure good-morrow!
'Tis fit that the first tongue which speaks to us
Of day-light, should speak beauteously. True love
Does this, and will not miss so sweet a time,
Turning it face to face, and ending prayer
With blessing realized Wise sire was he,
And had (no wonder) a wise loving son,
Who every morning, breathing in a flute,
Took the sleep softly from his infant's eyes,
Disposing thus his spirit to accord.
Parents beside their infants' beds are Gods:
They do them good, awaking or asleep,
Ere the small mortals know them. Who shall say,
That spirits divine stoop not in pity thus
Over the parents too, in their distress,
Their children grey; and out of struggling dreams
Wake them to some strange face of hope and joy,
Some re-assurance of regarding heaven?

Yes; light is lovely for its own good sake.
Morning is morning still, clouded or fair.
He wants his cure indeed from Nature's breast,
Wants air, and movement, and a natural life,
Or innocence regained from patient thoughts,
To whom the daylight's reappearance mild
Comes like a blow,—like a dread taskmaster
Waking his slave, who sees his load, and groans.
For me, whom Love and no unloving need
Have taught the treasures found in daily things,
I count the morning bright, if I but hear
One bird's voice sparkle (for the voice of birds,
By fine analogy of sound with sight,
Surely does sparkle, making brilliant cheer
Congenial with the sunbeams); and if bird
Nor sunbeam is abroad, but listening more
I hear the windows thick with wateriness,
Which ever and anon the gusty hand
Of the dark wind flings full, I make my morn
Still beauteous if I please, with sunny help
Of books or my own thoughts; sending them up
Like nymphs above the sea of atmosphere,
To warm their winking cheeks against the sun,
And laugh 'twixt islands of the mountain tops
Or else my morning breaks for me in bloom
Out of old Greece, twice glowing with some love
Of sweet Aurora midst the lily dews:
Or with the tumbling freshness of the seas
Am I, with slippery porpuses, and mirth
Of the wide breathing of the rough serene,
Tossing the seaman's house, whose sides are touched
With the warm heav'n, after a night of wet:
Or rising where the sun does, I behold,
Enthroned, the Persian with his jewelry,
True ‘Brother of the Sun’, if only then,
And giving beam for beam, awake and high,
While the dull princes of the West lie blowzed.

'Tis fine to think, that with the earliest sun,
Not kings alone, but the whole East is up,
In this well meriting its orient name.
So rose the patriarchs, and sate with heaven
Under the oaks they planted. So rise now
All that pretend to patriarchal bloom,
Agreeing all, if in nought else, to make
Each day the symbol and part integral
Of the whole life, and so to morning life
Each day restored, catching the quick blood round,
Till sweet and late it stop, not clogged midway,
Nor jarring with the swift smooth soul o' the world.

Some right have the swift-blooded to be proud,
Not in poor scorn, or low comparison
With what is under them (which stoops them lower),
But in the joy of lofty company
Right-strengthed, and all fair planetary things
That dance with heav'n. I've risen in winter-time
Before the dawn, and making me a bower
Of warmth and light with candle and with fire,
Sailed in the climate like a shrouded god,
Lord of the day before me, and at times
Peering betwixt my curtains out on earth
Fast sleeping, and with blocks of houses black,
'Till to myself I almost feigned to seem
Proud o'er my prostrate kind; and partly did,
Because of my good will, and a good task.

And yet, thus warring against indolence
And ease, as I get up, with sprightly words,
Like medicinal arrows of the sun,
Shall I pretend, with the unfeeling need
Of one who rides through battle, to partake
No sympathy with those whom I leave lying?
No thought, ye powers of habit and sweet sleep
And sweet remorse, for bed! catholic bed!
The universal, wilful, sweet, stretched bed!
Bed, that lays prostrate half the world in turn,
And hugs us in a heaven of our own arms?

Let me lie still awhile, and moot that point,
The bed-clothes o'er my ear. 'Tis charity,
Impartial sense: one would taste all like others,
To judge them rightly. What a turn is this,
One's back to the window! How it makes all new,
Bringing a second and soft curtained night
Over one's smiling eyelids! What old warmth,
Touched with new coolness at the hand or knee!
What a next half-an-hour!

Now is the house
Risen before me, and I find my rest,
By contrast of their mere activity,
Grow sweeter. They, methinks are forced to rise,
And I, not being forced, taste freedom more,
I doze, I fix myself, I turn again,
Waking; then turn upon my back, and keep
The middle of the bed, from a nice sense
Of equal reasoning; and do find withal
That such as marvel how vivacious men
Can lie awake, have not vivacity,
But from gross need of life and motion, hurt
A lively cause. Oh these are not the wits
To tax ingenious bed! Life livelier still
Than what lies smiling in us, must do that,—
Birds, sunbeams, habits, duties, all at once,—
Or journey, or another's journey helped;
Or friend who comes to breakfast, and who piques
Our friendship and our emulation both;
Or laughing children; or a sudden voice,
Sudden, and strange, and well known, and beloved,
And loud (as far as such sweet voice can be)
That comes before her letter, and fills all
The sunny house with lightsome womanhood.

Dull admonition provokes opposition.
(This is a proverb in the style of Swift,
Who made old sayings as he wanted them.)
No life in lying still! Why, we may lie,
(We who have any ubiquity of spirit)
And still roll round wi' the earth: we can turn swift
The corner of dull night, and so be whirled
Full in the face of morning, with a flash
Sudden as Alpine tops to eagles' eyes:
We can be up with every bee, bird, peasant;
Bounding with deer, sucked up to heaven with larks,
Careering with wild steeds, dashing with waves
'Gainst the short breath of the fresh laughing morn.

A little leaven, saith a reverend text,
Leaveneth a lump. Not long since lived a lump
Of round humanity, nay, liveth still,
And ever shall, long as the Seasons roll
And clouds drop fatness, who with his sweet leaven
Of lazy and luxurious sympathy
With all sweet things, might have sufficed, alone,
To show how quick and dulcet at the core
A slugabed can be. ‘Falsely luxurious!
Will not man wake?’ cried he; then turning, lay
In bed till twelve; and sauntering, when he rose,
Into his garden, slippered, and with hands
Each in a waistcoat pocket (so that all
Might yet repose that could) was seen, one morn,
Eating a wondering peach from off the tree.
He said he had ‘no motive’ to rise soon.
‘And why should he have ris'n?’ sharply enquired
The critic, sage in his good-natured spleen
Against the shallow: ‘what had he to do,
After delighting us with deathless books,
But to lie on, wrapped in his ease and fame,
And have his feast out?’ Nothing—but to lie
Still longer, and with thrice his feast of fame,
And half his fat;—could all that moulded him,
Blood, breeding, habit, and his ancestors,
And e'en the very plumpness of his verse,
Have let him; so with Wieland to have shaken
His silver locks at eighty with mild mirth;
Or died, as Titian, 'midst his colours, did,
Nipt in his reverend bloom by a mischance
At ninety-nine! But circumstance and habit,
Like secret mistresses, clasp mightiest men,
Much more these teachers of soft sympathy,
Whose world were yet the best, were all made smooth
And acquiescence justice; and they speak
E'en now a voice, which in the echo grows
Stronger than victory blowing through a town,
Because none hate it.

Lie then, if ye will,
Ye gentle, and ye jovial, and like him
Moot the sweet point, if fortune give ye leave,
And no wronged future mar the twice-heaped down
Plucked from the heart of hours, yet in the nest.
Lie on, ye old, and cold, and cosy; lie,
Ye thin whose bones want clothing; and ye fat,
Yourselves a bed for jollity; and lie,
Ye who last night forgot that it was night,
The wine discoursed so well; and all in short
Who with excuse or none (none being best,
Because the sweet will then is most unmixed)
Wake but to differ with old moral dawn,
And, like a lover, who more fondly clasps
His mistress blamed, turn closer to dear bed.
All must have justice done to them, ere all
Can feel for all: and this being done to you,
Ye captives of embracing circumstance
And o'ergrown leisure, think, I pray you, tenderly,
As the sweet poet did, of those whose wants,
Or other dread-voiced calls on waking eyes
(In which perhaps a tear has dreamt all night),
Suffer not ev'n to suffer from repose,
So dire their load, and to be balanced ever.
Think of them when ye rise; and teach, like him,
Justice, and truth, and better measurement
Of ease to all; so shall they gladly see
Your happier lot meantime, till rights go round,
And some blest morn, ye, they, and the whole earth
Shall be rejoiced to rise, because the earth
Then, for the first time, shall spin perfectly
In the pleased ear of Him that made Endeavour.

Like smiles and tears upon an infant's face,
Who wonders at himself, and at such things
In faces round him, my swift thoughts are mixed.
'Tis natural to me; nor unnatural
To any human heart, deeply conceiving
Sorrow or mirth. May it be harsh to none