In chambers dim thou wilt have wrought, With no one by, to cheer, And trod the downward paths of thought, In solitude and fear;
Nor till the weary day was o’er, Into the air have fled From thought which could delight no more, From books whose power was dead;
What time perchance the drooping day With burning vapour fills The deep recesses far away Of all the golden hills:
Or later, when the twilight blends All hues, or when the moon Into the ocean depths descends, A wavering column, down.
Then hast not thou in spirit leapt, Emerging from thy gloom, Like one who unawares o’erstept The barriers of a tomb.
And in thine exultation cried-- Of gladness having fill, And in it being glorified-- “The world is beauteous still!”
Wise are ye in a wisdom vainly sought Thro’ all the records of the historic page; It is not to be learned by lengthened age, Scarce by deep musings of unaided thought: By suffering and endurance ye have bought A knowledge of the thousand links that bind The highest with the lowest of our kind, And how the indissoluble chain is wrought. Ye fell by your own mercy once--beware, When your lots leap again from fortune’s urn, An heavier error--to be pardoned less. Yours be it to the nations to declare That years of pain and disappointment turn Weak hearts to gall, but wise to gentleness.
Like nightly watchers from a palace tower, In hope and faith and patience strong to wait The beacons on the hills, which should relate How some fenced city of deceit and power Had fallen--ye have stood for many an hour, Till your first hope’s high movements must be dead, And if with new ye have not cheered and fed Your bosoms, dim despair may be your dower. Yet not for all--tho’ yet no fire may crest The mountains, or light up their beacons sere-- Your eminent commission so far wrong, Or so much flatter the oppressors’ rest, As to give o’er your watching, for so long As ye shall hope, ’tis reason they must fear.
The moments that we rescue and redeem From the bare desert and the waste of years, To fertilize, it may be with our tears, Yet so that for time after they shall teem With better than rank weeds, and wear a gleam Of visionary light, and on the wind Fling odours from the fields long left behind, These and their fruit to us can never seem Indifferent things, and therefore do I look Not without gentle sadness upon thee, And liken thy outgoing, O my book, To the impatience of a little brook, Which might with flowers have lingered pleasantly, Yet toils to perish in the mighty sea.