The day has long gone by wherein 't was thought
That men were greater poets, inasmuch
As they were more unlike their fellow-men:
The poet sees beyond, but dwells among,
The wearing turmoil of our work-day life;
His heart not differs from another heart,
But rather in itself enfolds the whole
Felt by the hearts about him, high or low,
Hath deeper sympathies and clearer sight
And is more like a human heart than all;
His larger portion is but harmony
Of heart, the all-potent alchemy that turns
The humblest things to golden inspiration;
A loving eye's unmatched sovereignty;
A self-sustained, enduring humbleness;
A reverence for woman; a deep faith
In gentleness, as strength's least doubtful proof; And an electric sympathy with love,
Heaven's first great message to all noble souls.
But, if the poet's duty be to tell
His fellow-men their beauty and their strength,
And show them the deep meaning of their souls,
He also is ordained to higher things;
He must reflect his race's struggling heart,
And shape the crude conceptions of his age.
They tell us that our land was made for song,
With its huge rivers and sky-piercing peaks,
Its sea-like lakes and mighty cataracts,
Its forests vast and hoar, and prairies wide,
And mounds that tell of wondrous tribes extinct;
But Poesy springs not from rocks and woods;
Her womb and cradle are the human heart,
And she can find a nobler theme for song
In the most loathsome man that blasts the sight,
Than in the broad expanse of sea and shore
Between the frozen deserts of the poles.
All nations have their message from on high,
Each the messiah of some central thought,
For the fulfilment and delight of Man :
One has to teach that labor is divine;
Another, Freedom; and another, Mind;
And all, that God is open-eyed and just,
The happy centre and calm heart of all.
Are, then, our woods, our mountains, and our streams,
Needful to teach our poets how to sing?
O, maiden rare, far other thoughts were ours,
When we have sat by ocean's foaming marge,
And watched the waves leap roaring on the rocks,
Than young Leander and his Hero had,
Gazing from Sestos to the other shore.
The moon looks down and ocean worships her,
Stars rise and set, and seasons come and go
Even as they did in Homer's elder time,
But we behold them not with Grecian eyes :
Then they were types of beauty and of strength,
But now of freedom, unconfined and pure,
Subject alone to Order's higher law.
What cares the Russian serf or Southern slave,
Though we should speak as man spake never yet
Of gleaming Hudson's broad magnificence,
Or green Niagara's never-ending roar?
Our country hath a gospel of her own
To preach and practise before all the world,-
The freedom and divinity of man,
The glorious claims of human brotherhood,
Which to pay nobly, as a freeman should,
Gains the sole wealth that will not fly away, -
And the soul's fealty to none but God.
These are realities, which make the shows
Of outward Nature, be they ne'er so grand,
Seem small, and worthless, and contemptible.
These are the mountain-summits for our bards,
Which stretch far upward into heaven itself,
And give such wide-spread and exulting view
Of hope, and faith, and onward destiny,
That shrunk Parnassus to a molehill dwindles.
Our new Atlantis, like a morning-star,
Silvers the murk face of slow-yielding Night,
The herald of a fuller truth than yet
Hath gleamed upon the upraised face of Man
Since the earth glittered in her stainless prime,
Of a more glorious sunrise than of old
Drew wondrous melodies from Memnon huge,
Yea, draws them still, though now he sits waist-deep
In the engulfing flood of whirling sand,
And looks across the wastes of endless
Sole wreck, where once his hundred-gated Thebes
Pained with her mighty hum the calm, blue heaven:
Shall the dull stone pay grateful orisons,
And we till noonday bar the splendor out,
Lest it reproach and chide our sluggard hearts,
Warm-nestled in the down of Prejudice,
And be content, though clad with angel-wings,
Close-clipped, to hop about from perch to perch,
In paltry cages of dead men's dead thoughts?
O, rather, like the sky-lark, soar and sing,
And let our gushing songs befit the dawn
And sunrise, and the yet unshaken dew
Brimming the chalice of each full-blown hope,
Whose blithe front turns to greet the growing day!
Never had poets such high call before,
Never can poets hope for higher one,
And, if they be but faithful to their trust,
Earth will remember them with love and joy,
And, O, far better, God will not forget.
For he who settles Freedom's principles
Writes the death-warrant of all tyranny;
Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart, And his mere word makes despots tremble more
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