In Youth I Have Known One
How often we forget all time, when loneAdmiring Nature's universal throne;Her woods--her wilds--her mountains--the intenseReply of Hers to Our intelligence!
In youth I have known one with whom the EarthIn secret communing held--as he with it,In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was litFrom the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forthA passionate light such for his spirit was fit--And yet that spirit knew--not in the hourOf its own fervor--what had o'er it power.
Perhaps it may be that my mind is wroughtTo a ferver by the moonbeam that hangs o'er,But I will half believe that wild light fraughtWith more of sovereignty than ancient loreHath ever told--or is it of a thoughtThe unembodied essence, and no moreThat with a quickening spell doth o'er us passAs dew of the night-time, o'er the summer grass?
Doth o'er us pass, when, as th' expanding eyeTo the loved object--so the tear to the lidWill start, which lately slept in apathy?And yet it need not be--(that object) hidFrom us in life--but common--which doth lieEach hour before us--but then only bidWith a strange sound, as of a harp-string brokenT' awake us--'Tis a symbol and a token--
Of what in other worlds shall be--and givenIn beauty by our God, to those aloneWho otherwise would fall from life and HeavenDrawn by their heart's passion, and that tone,That high tone of the spirit which hath strivenThough not with Faith--with godliness--whose throneWith desperate energy 't hath beaten down;Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.
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