Classic Poem

In the night, wandering,
In the spaces departed, from affections that would stay me,
Beyond the sun to other suns, beyond the question settled to new disclosures,
Not accepting the walls of my house as final, nor the voice I heard in trade,
At last possessed of sight, after long waiting entering victor to denied estates,
I, one man, only testifying to the gifts of others, to all duly announced,
Flushed by the maddening day.

The chemist's retort, surgery's dissecting knife, the scalpel efficient,
The discoverer in arctic snows or tropic heats,
The sailing ship, the locomotive making continents of one name and intention,
The heated debate, the speculation of philosophy, the rosy assurances of reformers,
Gold, influence, suppressions of conscience:
These, offering themselves, would-be agents, to farthest achievements pledged,
Accepted, fused, in new fires cast, rejected.

I picked a dried leaf off the ground, and with mournful tones others called it dead:
I knew it was not dead: over the cliff rushed its blood, as Niagara from the lakes.

What signs do you make to me, you curling streams and simple peasant ways of life?
What sign, O ocean? What sign, O skyclouds ever shifting?
Signs temporal, full of beauty, loved, feeding me as bread does not,
Satisfying me of itself, satisfying me because of its beyond,
Sign of unmeasured friendly supplication.

The crowd gathers round me, I am a target for protests, I stand erect receiving every dart unharmed:
Warnings, heartgiven, tearstrown, would deter me from resolves commensurate with new worlds to me revealed:
I can but hold you all in my life, as I am held in yours, sympathies universal harvesting,
Preparing in myself, seeing prepared in you by you,
Springs, summers, autumns, winters,
Rounded, of one meaning, never disconsolate or weary
Upon the painter's canvas, in the song of the poet, in eloquent deeds never yet vocal,
In faith's quick vision, seeing the cup full, drained, ever refilled,
In all propositions and all denials, in evil ways traversed by mistaken men,
Discerned infallibly, the issue ever wholesome, the laws eternal loyal to supreme explications,
Here spoken, here hinted of, yet again withdrawn until for each the hour of delivery strikes.

The hay allures me this summer afternoon;
I cross the hills, I linger in odors prodigally spent,
Yet these are but passports to seasons and fields not in the program of daily uses,
These are but sparks from fires sunbirthed
Whose burdened flash steadies the erratic eyesight
And brings the distant near.