The Buried Life

Light flows our war of mocking words; and yet,Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!I feel a nameless sadness o’er me roll.Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,We know, we know that we can smile!But there’s a something in this breast,To which thy light words bring no rest,And thy gay smiles no anodyne;Give me thy hand, and hush awhile,And turn those limpid eyes on mine,And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul.

Alas! is even love too weakTo unlock the heart, and let it speak?Are even lovers powerless to revealTo one another what indeed they feel?

I knew the mass of men concealedTheir thoughts, for fear that if revealedThey would by other men be metWith blank indifference, or with blame reproved;I knew they lived and movedTricked in disguises, alien to the restOf men, and alien to themselves--and yetThe same heart beats in every human breast!

But we, my love! doth a like spell benumbOur hearts, our voices? must we too be dumb?

Ah! well for us, if even we,Even for a moment, can get freeOur heart, and have our lips unchained;For that which seals them hath been deep-ordained!

Fate, which foresawHow frivolous a baby man would be,--By what distractions he would be possessed,How he would pour himself in every strife,And well-nigh change his own identity,--That it might keep from his capricious playHis genuine self, and force him to obeyEven in his own despite his being’s law,Bade through the deep recesses of our breastThe unregarded river of our lifePursue with indiscernible flow its way;And that we should not seeThe buried stream, and seem to beEddying at large in blind uncertainty,Though driving on with it eternally.

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,But often, in the din of strife,There rises an unspeakable desireAfter the knowledge of our buried life;A thirst to spend our fire and restless forceIn tracking out our true, original course;A longing to inquireInto the mystery of this heart which beatsSo wild, so deep in us,--to knowWhence our lives come, and where they go.And many a man in his own breast then delves,But deep enough, alas! none ever mines.And we have been on many thousand lines,And we have shown, on each, spirit and power;But hardly have we, for one little hour,Been on our own line, have we been ourselves,--Hardly had skill to utter one of allThe nameless feelings that course through our breast,But they course on forever unexpressed.And long we try in vain to speak and actOur hidden self, and what we say and doIs eloquent, is well--but ’tis not true!And then we will no more be rackedWith inward striving, and demandOf all the thousand nothings of the hourTheir stupefying power;Ah, yes, and they benumb us at our call!Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,From the soul’s subterranean depth upborneAs from an infinitely distant land,Come airs, and floating echoes, and conveyA melancholy into all our day.

Only--but this is rare--When a beloved hand is laid in ours,When, jaded with the rush and glareOf the interminable hours,Our eyes can in another’s eyes read clear,When our world-deafened earIs by the tones of a loved voice caressed,--A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.

A man becomes aware of his life’s flow,And hears its winding murmur, and he seesThe meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.

And there arrives a lull in the hot raceWherein he doth forever chaseThe flying and elusive shadow, rest.An air of coolness plays upon his face,And an unwonted calm pervades his breast;And then he thinks he knowsThe hills where his life rose,And the sea where it goes.