Classic Poem

O if in this wide world there be no one
Whom thou, lone soul, may'st heap thy love upon,
What art thou then to do, since nought but this
Can ever bring thee into deeps of bliss?
There is no true bliss save in lavishing
Thy whole affection on some only thing:
For if love be divided it may die.
But thou, lone one, hast no such thing! no eye
Hangs on thee like a planet, drawing thee
Into the self-abandon'd ecstasy
Of adoration! nor a love-toned voice
Makes to thine ear all other music noise,
Shaming the fabled hymning of the spheres —
A voice whereon thou'dst dwell until thine ears
Forgot the knowing of all other sound.
No hand's soft pressure makes thy pulses bound
Into a trance of feeling so refined
That even thy very flesh becomes a mind,
And thou hast lost thy being in another —
Ah, hadst thou one combining these together,
Then might'st thou live the bliss, the want of which
Keeps thee the lonely soul.

But why not teach
Thyself to live as other mortals do?
And eat and drink and sleep thy earth's hour through;
Fall in with the World's own humour, jest and rail,
Slander thy neighbour, laugh at the merry tale;
Believe in the supremacy of wealth;
Bow down before nobility; thy health
Leave to the doctor; let the parson keep
Thy soul; and, trusting him, let Question sleep.

Into the World's wheel thou canst never fall,
But hover'st on its rim, like the erring ball
That ever cometh in at the wrong place,
And is spun off again. The World's full race
Seems not to want thee. Like a sinful ghost,
No grave will have thee: yet methinks thou know'st
Full well the reason; ha! thou'lt have no grave!
Into the World's mad chase thou wilt not crave
To get admission — even glorying
In thy exclusion, nourishing the sting
Which seems to breed thy pain, but which, indeed,
Is surely thy great joy, — else wherefore need
All these thy wand'rings into places lone,
Wherein thou seem'st to breathe an air unknown
To us inside the World — a frenzied air
Which, creeping in thy brain, makes music there,
Sweeter and softer than the fairies make
At noon, when sunshine sleeps in their green brake;
An air through which all visible nature seems
Fairer than that which poets see in dreams? —
It cannot be but thou art glorified
In these thy solitudes: the fenny side
Of some lone river, winding among sedge,
Where weary sea-birds, sitting on the edge,
Clamour the shrill air with their old-world cry,
And thou art strangely sad, yet know'st not why:
The hill-embosom'd glen, so dusk and deep,
Where, over shelving rocks, the waters leap
And fret themselves to foam, which sends a shower
Of pearls throughout the glen, o'er leaf and flower,
And all is in a spangling maze of dew:
The mountain ridge that looms so sharp and blue,
Where rugged clouds, like giants, stalk about,
In silence, like all power, yet working out
Thunders and winds that shake the ponderous globe:
The hearkening wood, made twilight with its robe
Of slumbering leaves, wherein the slightest sound
Leaps to thy startled heart, and the hollow ground
Reveals its secrets to thy wakening tread —
Dim hints of fairy-land; whilst overhead
Thou look'st into a shady sycamore,
And seest a little heaven in its core; —
The freshness of green leaves, the sunbeam's glory,
The unseen insects, humming their unknown story,
Sink deep into thy soul; — sweet little heaven,
He never can to nothingness be driven,
Can ne'er be wanting of a fair earth-dower,
Whose soul can live in thee one summer-hour.

But, 'tis not only when the lustry day
Wons in the woods that thou art tempt'd to stray
Out of our ken into these solitudes,
But also when black night comes down and broods
Over the morrow's birth. Then wilt thou trace
Thy moody way into some shuddering place
Where only ghosts would enter. Ah, sad soul!
The city joins in revelry; the bowl
Steams through our blood and brains; from lighted halls
Gush out whole floods of music; and stone walls
Are rent with song and mirth! Thou might'st be here,
Yet art in darkness, taking into thine ear
The hum of all this gladness; fondly deeming
That all our joy is but a shallow seeming,
And that thy bosom holds a deeper mirth —
Ours ever dying, thine a constant birth —
Ours still a losing that which we have found,
But thine a gaining that which hath no bound —
Ours coming to stops at morn, and noon, and even,
Thine the expanding circle of blue heaven! —
And truly there is no continuance
In our life's joy! it comes as if by chance;
It will not be impress'd, but shuns our seeking
The chain of earthly love is ever breaking;
And most dear friends are dearest when apart:
Thy presence, friend, is lead upon my heart:
Indeed, I love thee; yet, I know not how,
I'd love thee better, if thou'dst leave me now!

Nothing that hath not all the soul is lasting,
But ever runs to weariness and wasting:
And all the soul can nothing earthly have —
Unless perchance a virtuous woman's love,
Or the passion that to poesie gives birth; —
But when these have the soul, earth is not earth;
And therefore of high Heaven 'tis thought they are —
Kindred in beauty to the morning-star,
Whose rising so enwraps our adoration,
And brings o'er weary hearts a new creation.

But thou, lone one, hast no good woman's love,
Nor that fine power which draweth from above
The air in which the poet hath his breathing.
Yet in thy brain there seems a constant seething
Of spirit-element, and in thy breast
A joy, not quick and light, but all comprest
Deep and devouring as a mother's eye
Hung o'er her sleeping child, and no one by

We thought thee sad: that thought was form'd too soon!
Yet thou art lonely as the waning moon,
That creeps with weary step and trembling horn,
Athwart our windows, 'tween the night and morn.
And yet thou art not all alone; me-seems
Thou art like him who walketh in his dreams
And seeth some one that we cannot see, —
For though stone-blind to all we can, yet he
Is with mysterious presences. The skies
Are quick with throbbing life, though our weak eyes
See only voids of blue. To stronger gaze,
The voids reveal a presence more than haze.

And is it, then, this strong far-reaching sense
That, shunning our littleness, withdraws thee hence,
Out of the human World, to brood apart
Upon the muffled beating of that Heart
Which moves the spheres, and which thou deem'st is heard
Only in places from the World retired? —
Thy deeming is but dreaming! know thou this:
Thy God — man's God — shuns not our littleness
Hark! 'tis but music and gay tread of feet:
Yet listen! Hear'st thou not that solemn beat
Amidst it all? — the same which fills thine ear
In solitude — there terrifying — here,
Choir'd in humanities and homely things,
From which it takes those plaintive murmurings,
Almost too fine for human souls to note:
Yet thou, with thy fine ear, might'st hear them float
Where we are all unconscious. Come thou in
From thy lone deserts, and fear not the sin
That so envelopes us: thou'lt gain that part
Of man which thou most need'st — a human heart.
(And if God chiefly moves in any place,
'Tis the human heart.) O wherefore chase
Thy vision into solitude? A light
Is in us and about us day and night:
It is not of, but that which lights, the sun;
And clear eyes see it streaming from each one

The beating of that Heart which moves the spheres,
And which thy fine ear in the desert hears,
Is stronger here , and that mysterious Light
Which draws thy searching eyes beyond our sight,
Is with us, even as the air; and, thus,
What thou art seeking most, is most with us
Come, then, amongst us, and thou may'st be moved
To love us, and, thus loving, be belov'd:
For all this life is flat, and nothing worth,
Till lapp'd in love, as sunlight laps the earth.