PROLOGUE .

I

O N the ground, the barren ground,
Alone a grey-haired Pilgrim sate,
Wrapped in fit of thought profound;
On his hand his head reclined;
Silvery-tissued tresses hung
Sparse and spare above his brow,
Like snow-flakes on a wintry bough:
On his lips the musing mind
Played like music undefined,
From the wakened harp-strings flung
By the fingers of the wind;
Lightened up his eye sedate,
With complacency elate
Of a spirit that had won
Peace, its day of travail done.

II

With the Soul's eye you could trace
His life's changes in his face,
Through the phases it had past,
Or with light or shade o'ercast.
All its impresses were there
Graven, furrowed lines of care
Burying in their arid course
Gentler feelings that had been;
Lights which were the emanations
Of hope faded now, but left
Traces faint of their creations;
All the self-perturbing strife
Of wild passion, when it broke,
Like the fiery thunder-stroke;
Nurtured in each hidden cleft,
Blossoms of a growth serene.
The will sate on that forehead high,
And the imaginative power
That, as from a windowed tower,
Looked out from the open sky
Of that stilled and steadfast eye,
And saw its own infinity.

III

From the cliff's grey breast behind,
Issuing like a gentle thought
To its flowing course resigned,
A blue streamlet's shrunken vein
Glided like a starry train
Of light, seen and lost again;
So that water shone between
Mosses of an emerald green,
From its breath of freshness caught.
O'er the granite it had sown
Living grasses of its own
Where it stole in light and shade,
Gleaming forth and then unseen;
Like a child that, left alone,
At its own caprices strayed.
Seeking out its last retreat,
It passed by that Pilgrim's feet,
Like one staying not to greet.
Gazed that man of thought upon
Its clear forehead as it shone,
Touched by sunlight smilingly:
As if it chid the dreamer there,
Musing in the summer air,
Who a thought diseased had made
Of the things with which it played.
But he felt a deep truth told
In that voiceless stream that rolled
On, by law like him controlled;
That met uncomplainingly
Its forewritten destiny,
Offering ordained to be,
On the Altar of the Sea.
Then he turned his eyes away,
Resting on that landscape grey,
By still Evening's forehead lighted,
Where the earth and sky united;
And he watched with wistful eye
The orbed Moon that rose on high,
That from her pale solitude
Hath shone down through dateless years,
In immovable quietude,
On hearts healed or seared, that brood
On their passionate joy or tears.
Wreck, it may be, rent asunder
Or by whirlwind, fire, or thunder,
Then when cast forth by the Sun,
Child-like in her pathway crossed
And the track familiar lost,
It pursued the Parent One,
Wandering through the wastes astray,
Like one that hath missed its way.
And he saw her mountains shining,
Steeped in the same light as ours,
And the lower vales repining
In cold shade, as earthly powers
Wither from their barren throne,
Life inferior in our own.

IV

Then began that aged Man
To hold commune with his breast,
And awaken thought repressed,
As, through intervening space,
His eye from the orient ran
Down to his calm resting-place:
" Mother Nature! thou hast been
By me as God's image seen;
Be thou parent to me now,
While I filial love avow;
Take thou the humility,
And the truth I drew from thee.
To be human is to err;
My interior life illume,
Ere the mandate come of doom
From that sleepless Traveller,
Who, too early, or too late,
Knocketh at each mortal gate,
And its hinges backward flings,
Or of beggars or of Kings.
While thy leaves fade round my feet,
While the same decay I greet,
Let me, mighty Mother, look
In the secrets of thy heart,
As within an unclasped book.
Ere I from thy face depart,
Let me my own life conjoin,
With each type revealed in thine.

V

Trace the flowing stream from youth,
When the Boy, alone with truth,
Walked in solitude the sod,
Clad in glory caught from God;
With a soul as pure and bright
As the emanating light
From day's gate when Morning springs,
Carrying sunlight on its wings.
Trace the path through bourne and glade;
Through each vale where beauty strayed,
When young hope the hours delayed,
While love at the altar knelt
In the idolatry he felt;
Then when life's first roses laid
On his forehead undecayed:
Trace through darkness where the soul
Hides its sin by the controul
Of cold self-love, or the pride
That its life has petrified.
Till, metamorphosed by sure years,
And the grief the life that sears,
The soul, like a sage retired,
Feeling the grey evening's chill,
Sits in contemplative mood,
And from its cold solitude
Looks back on youth's purple hill,
Whence its ardent hope aspired;
When the eye shot living fire,
When each thought was a desire,
Then with brow immovable,
And eyes earthward slowly cast,
As of one who now hath done
With all new beneath the sun,
Lives on memory and the past.

VI

" Minstrel of the heart! if be
The bright crown awarded thee
By divinest Poesy,
And if thou shalt strike the key
With truth's own fidelity,
Not a note but shall be heard,
From the soul's deep sources stirred,
Not a leaf shall fall to earth,
But to prove regenerate birth,
Not a word that shall not sink
In the bosom, fed like dew,
Strengthening the power to think;
The strong purpose to renew,
And the will to feel and do."