قراءة كتاب Eidolon; or, The Course of a Soul; and Other Poems
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Eidolon; or, The Course of a Soul; and Other Poems
prisoner fetter'd to his ocean cell—
What were it but a plunge—an instant strife—
Then liberty snatch'd from the clutch of Death
The Tyrant, who with mystic terror grinds
Men into slaves—But he who thinks is free,
And fineless as the unresting winds of heaven,
Now rushing with wild joy around the belt
Of whirling Saturn, then away through space
Till he and all his radiant brotherhood
Dwindle to fire-flies round the brow of Night.
Thought is the great creator under God,
Begotten of his breathing, that can raise
Shapes from the dust and give them Beauty's soul;
And though my empire be a continent,
Squared down from leagues to inches, what of that?
The mind contains a world within its frame
Which Fancy peoples o'er with radiant forms,
Replete with life and spirit excellence.
O! there is glory in the thought that now
I stand absolved from all the chilling forms
And falsities of life, that like frail reeds
Pierce the blind palms of those that lean on them,
And from the springs of my own being draw
All strength, and hope, and joyance, all that makes
Lone meditations sweet, and schools the heart
For prophecy. In the o'erpeopled world
We seem like babes that cannot walk alone,
But fasten on the skirts of other men,
Their creeds, conclusions, and vain phantasies,
Too languid, or too weak to poize ourselves;
But here the crutch is shattered at a blow,
Dependence made a thing for winds to blast,
And paraphrase in bitter mockery.
I dream upon the busy haunts of men
As things that touch me not. An empire riven,
A monarchy o'erthrown, here seem to me
Importless as a foam-bell's death. The world
And all its revolutions are now less
Within my chronicles, than is the ken
Of a star's orbit on the fines of space;
But like a mariner saved from the wreck
On this calm spot I stand, unscathed, secure
From the rough throbbings of the sea of strife,
And woe, and clamour, wherewith this world's life
Ebbs and declines unto the printless shore
Of death. O! blessed change, if there were one
To love me in this solitude, and make
Life beautiful. My soul is wearied out
With earth's fierce warfare, and its selfish ease;
The slights and coldness of the hollow crowds
That are its arbiters; the changeful face,
The upstart arrogance of base-born fools,
Who crown them with their golden dross, and deem
That the all-potent badge of sovereignty.
A golden palace in all solitude,
Whither the strains of quiet melodies
Float on the breath of memory, like songs
From the dim bosom of the evening woods,
Peopling its chambers with sweet poesy?
Hast thou not called the sunshine from the morn
To circle thee with a pure spirit life,
And with the softness of its tender arms
Clasp thee in the embrace of heav'nly love?
Hast thou not heard the music of the stars,
In the calm stillness of the summer night,
And read their jewell'd pages o'er and o'er,
Like the bright inspirations of a bard,
Till glowing strophes rung within thy soul
Of glad Orion and clear Pleiades?
Hast thou not seen the silv'ry moonshine thrill
Upon the dusky mantle of the night,
Like radiant glances through a maiden's veil,
Till shaken thence they fell in a pure shower
O'er flood and field and bosky wilderness,
Wreathing earth with the glory of a saint?
Far from its pleasures and its miseries,
Far from the panting cry of man's desire,
That waileth upward in hoarse discontent,
And here to list but to that liquid voice
That riseth in the spirit, and whose flow
Is like a rivulet from Paradise—
To hear the wanderings of divine thought
Within the soul, like the low ebb and flow
Of waters in the blue-deep ocean caves,
Forming itself a speech and melody
Sweeter than words unto the aching sense—
To stand alone with Nature where man's step
Hath never bowed a grass-blade 'neath its weight,
Nor hath the sound of his rude utterance
Broken the pauses of the wild-bird's song;
And thus in its unpeopled solitude
To be the spirit of this universe,
Centering thought and reason in one frame,
And in the majesty of quenchless soul,
Rising unto the stature of a man,
That is to make life glorious and great,
Dissolving matter in the spiritual,
As the green pine dissolveth into flame;
Not on the breath of popular applause
That is the spectre of all nothingness;
Not on the fawning of a servile crew,
Who kiss the hem of fortune's purple robe,
And lick the dust before prosperity,
Waiting the cogging of the downward scale,
To turn from slaves to bravos in the dark;
Not on the favours of the politic,
Who in the smile