Classic Poem

'Twas nothing but a light within a hand;
A prisoned light that gleamed beyond its prison.

Once it was free, and in the cool night air
Disported like a fairy lamp, upborne
By unseen hands and rivalling the stars,
That gazed in paler lustre from on high.

And even now the horny hand grew bright
And almost beautiful beneath its glow,
That shone through clutching fingers, like the face
Of some good angel, for a while condemned
To dwell within a dungeon.
Then I thought
'Twas not the only light that I had seen,
Which should have had the free air's boundless scope.
Pent up within a hand's-breadth. One I knew
(Ay more than one) whose soul was quick with fire,
Eternal, inextinguishable, divine,
Which would have filled the wide earth with its rays
Had it found freedom. Ignorance barred it in,
And strong-armed Circumstance, and the shrinking shame
Of self-distrust, that preys on noble minds
Rather than on the vulgar.
Every soul
Is as that fire-fly, bright but cabined in.
Some gleam beyond their barriers, and some
Merge with the dull clod that walls them round,
Stifled and crushed, or glimmer on unseen,
Making an inward rapture.

Could the full rays stream out in perfect glare
Then man were the similitude of God;
The Adam ere he fell; Deity himself
In miniature reflected.
Nazareth saw
That sight, and Bethlehem, and Bethany,
And Olivet, and old Jerusalem,
And the sad garden of Gethsemane,
And Calvary's sacred mount: for perfect man
Was there in all his glory. Perfect God
Was also there, for God and man were one,—
The mystery of the ages.