Classic Poem

THE Stranger .

Here let me rest; no shore is now in sight
Save as on either side a faint blue line.
No boat but mine pursued by the white foam
Cleaves the gray waters; I will ship my oars,
And let the boat drift with the wind and current.
The silence is so deep that I can hear
As 'twere the sound of time as it fleets by,
The flow of that unseen and mightier ocean,
Whereon the barks of states and lives and times
Have been borne forth to death or sure decay.
Beneath its voiceless waves the wrecks are hid
Of hopes that oversoared its blue of sky,
And stood at gaze on God; of joys that crushed
The whole world as clear grapes upon the lip,
And drank intoxication of red wine
That made the soul, large as the universe,
Scorn the earth's round as a child's outgrown toy;
Of fierce disdain upon whose lofty ridge
Stood poised the soul in utter rectitude,
And showed the world where Right shone as a sun.
Upon this dizzy verge the Present stands;
I look adown the abyss, and see the whirl
Of the fast-vanishing Past, and mightiest thrones
Of noblest virtues, images of dreams
Supernal, and extremest heights of thought,
Flicker like stars across that nether sky,
Burn, bicker, flash, are seen no more forever;
And like a mist wherein the strong winds strive,
The Future rolls before, and underfoot
Solidifies, while all that is, is not,
Down-sunken in the gulf that waits for all.
O soul, that holdest in thy reach of thought
Time with its vast contents, and teeming space,
Thou need'st not tremble while the spectacle
Furls and unfurls, appears, appeareth not, —
The immutable mutation, changeless change,
That in its variability hath rest.
Is there no permanent? no higher thought
Wherein the riddle answers its own quest?
Nay, here are visions born of corporal eye,
Fair shapes the senses build and break, a world
That is but as the gazer looks upon 't.
Eternity is that concentring point
Wherein all rays of being merge, the Now
Born of the Past, and holding the To-Come
As seed for ripening; there, O soul, dwell thou;
Nay, dwell not, rather be thou that great thought,
And so become the circling Universe,
Transfuse the flow of things with thine own self,
And win essential immortality.
The light breaks through the clouds with this deep thought,
As though the outer symbolled in great joy
The rapture of discovery; 'tis well;
As on my soul floods the wide light of truth,
So flood, O sun, thy realm with radiancy.
It is a fair new day; I call it fair,
Although the sombre gray of possible rain
Pervades the air, and the impetuous sun
Is shorn of half his glory or ere it falls.
Look to the hollow globe of sky — how fair!
In mass on mass of softest pearly tint,
And narrowing circles to the central point,
The mountainous clouds climb the steep curve of sky;
See there the space of unveiled central blue,
Intense in brightness past the power of words,
The fleece-like clouds in sweetly-broken shreds
Environing it; the waters lie below,
A rippled floor of sober shine; ah me,
The wondrous air, most clear, most full of glow,
And every cloud and every fitful wave
Is dowered with perfect color; so I drift
Through the pale Paradise of simple Truth.
I mind me of the old philosopher
Who saw the pure Ideas in their dance,
Prefiguring the worlds, and, rapt in dreams,
Beheld the plains whereon the assembled souls
Choose lives to languish through beneath the moon.
Can it then be that on the upper air,
As on the ocean's waves, green shores advance,
And beings dwell whose drink is some fine ether,
Who scorn our gross embodiment, the garb
Wherein our souls are prisoned, and who are
Companions for the often-visiting Gods?
I poise me on yon cloud and dare to dream
How life is shaped in that cool, placid realm,
A life of thought, clear, passionless, remote,
Unvexed by winds of fierce emotion, calm,
And resolute to pierce the core of things,
Bathed in the nearer sunlight, unbestained
With exhalations of our atmosphere.
But lo! I dream in sooth; not of the cloud
Is the pure vigor that has rapt my thought,
Not based on mists that from earth's ocean come,
And are but outwalls of its sullen realm;
Above the height of air and concave sky
That limits mind of terrene men, I soar
Into the thinner ether, which to breathe
Slays the dull body's weight, and robes the soul
In nudity of clear expression, form
That is Idea's self; but see, I drift
Close to the shore, and the sun's burnished rays
Clothe with light fierce as many-flashing steel
A single spot in the encincturing landscape,
All else being wrapped in shadow pale, subdued;
Like gems the sweetly-shapen trees drink in
And then reflect the partial splendor; a path
Winds through the gold-green arch of greeting trees,
And at the avenue's end a white small house,
And children at their play. It cannot be!
And yet the thrill of pleasure that unmans me
Cannot deceive! That purpose will not down!
And now I hear her laugh; it is the voice,
And as she moves, I see the childish grace
That has a charm such as a queen of elves
Might hold her subjects with; I do not err.
She penetrates by mystic accident
My solitude; alas! I hoped to tear
My roots of life out from the alien soil
They deeply clung to, dreams where she was queen.
Yet must I be a slave to whim and hope,
Be fettered by desire for earthly good,
Care for some waif of rude humanity,
Be tossed at will on waves of bitter love?
But I must think aright; the experiment
Is worth endeavor; I should make the girl
The pearl, the crown of womanhood; all Time
Her hand should wear as some slight ornament
That emphasizes beauty; secret lore
From the unfathomed Orient's store, and grasp
Of Nature that makes her obey the will,
With those high truths the sages hid in myth
Lest the profane should read, I give for dower;
I may not yield; I will resume the search,
And bear my bird unto my eager hearth,
Not so that she will dwell there sad and caged,
But that her song, grown strong with justest use
(The bounds of her sweet home being overpassed,
And youth's much need of wisdom's guidance done),
Will fill the reaches of the world's wide wood
With more than native fire of song, and rapture
Wherein the soul finds her primeval peace.
A joy, a fury seizes me, a bliss
That has not torn me since my vanished youth,
Since the fierce days when in the whirl of life
I plunged as a strong swimmer in the waves
Whose reckless foam burns gold in the high sun.
I swiftly seek the shore, I cannot fail,
It is a work set for me by the years.
Unto this height I clomb from whence all things
Are but slight elements in the vast view,
The oversight that merges in a point
The multitudinous universe, that has
The All engrasped, of knowledge absolute
The peak and summit; hither my soul has flown,
That it might ope the doors of some deep mind,
Might pierce the darkness of intelligence
That glooms it round, and, having shown the truth,
Arm it for fight with men — my task, indeed,
Save for my feeble flesh, and halting breath —
And so my world-work will be well fulfilled.
My little prophetess, your melodies
Will pierce the slumberous ears of the old world,
Awake the time to knowledge of high truth,
Give wings to cruel-fettered Liberty;
For I shall die, but you will be my soul,
To shed my thoughts as leaves upon the winds,
As rays of light upon the air, or rain
From highest clouds upon the thirsty fields,
My little singer, whose deep thought am I!