Classic Poem

These feeble sounds
Give not my soul's rich meaning; or my thought
Rises too boldly o'er the human line
Of alphabets (misused). Why should I wish
For words to form a picture for the world
Too rare? O world! what hast thou in thy sounds
So dear as silent memory when she leads
The shade of the departed? Ask despair
What renovation is, when friendship bends
To kiss her tears away; but ask her eyes;
The pleasing anguish dwells not on her tongue.
Will friendship stay, when love and virtue fly?
Sooner Leviathan shall pierce the skies,
Roll 'mid the burning chamber of the sun,
And hate the chrystal caverns in the deep!
" Folly" could ne'er o'ertake me. Oft I verge,
When warmed by fancy, to the farthest bound
My sense of words can bear; but at the extreme
Condemn the sense that chastity throws off. —
" Folly!" Good heaven! have I not climbed an height
So frightful, e'en from comfort so remote,
That had my judgement reeled, my foot forgot
Its strenuous print, my inexperienced eye
The wondrous point in view; or my firm soul,
Made early stubborn, her exalted pride,
Though of external poor; the stagnant lake
Of Vice beneath, than Cocytus more foul,
Had oped its wave to swallow me, and hide
My frame for ever. This I saw: the year
Ne'er riped the corn, or strewed the yellow leaf,
But some too feeble maid, who in the morn
Ascended with me, lost her hold and fell,
Leaving the glorious plaudit of the wise
To rough laborious spirits. I attained
With wretchedness this summit; hence, look down
On the lapsed ages, towers, and sleeping kings,
Whose heads repose 'mid monarchies engulfed,
With temples, oracles, long-whispering fanes,
Through which the mystic meaning awed the crowd,
And stooped the public spirit to its lore:
There lie vast amphitheatres, to behold
How beasts of prey could tear the human heart,
Rich with some loved impression. — O forbear,
My muse! turn from the vision, lest thou wake
Emotion, and compare that heart with mine —
There gentle Petrarch sleeps; mild victim long
To that serene despair, which once imbibed
The soul grows fond of, and withdraws, to give
Her tints of sympathy, ideal grace,
Languishing sentiment, and faithful tear,
To the wild woodland: there she feels enlarged,
And far from noise, looks calmly o'er the grave.
Petrarch! hadst thou not lived, what mind had dared
To own that flame, kindled so near the throne
Of God, it makes men like him? From this height
I see the bleating lamb trot o'er the turf
That covers long-descended kingdoms: hear
The tiger roar, where tyrants scourged mankind;
On roofs of buried palaces remark
The mole rearing her fabric; learn the hymn
Sweet Philomel sings to the warrior's shade —
Far o'er the plain, beneath the midnight moon.