The Future

A wanderer is man from his birth.He was born in a shipOn the breast of the river of Time;Brimming with wonder and joy,He spreads out his arms to the light,Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream.

As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been.Whether he wakesWhere the snowy mountainous pass,Echoing the screams of the eagles,Hems in its gorges the bedOf the new-born, clear-flowing stream;Whether he first sees lightWhere the river in gleaming ringsSluggishly winds through the plain;Whether in sound of the swallowing sea,--As is the world on the banks,So is the mind of the man.

Vainly does each, as he glides,Fable and dreamOf the lands which the river of TimeHad left ere he woke on its breast,Or shall reach when his eyes have been closed.Only the tract where he sailsHe wots of; only the thoughts,Raised by the objects he passes, are his.

Who can see the green earth any moreAs she was by the sources of Time?Who imagines her fields as they layIn the sunshine, unworn by the plough?Who thinks as they thought,The tribes who then roamed on her breast,Her vigorous, primitive sons?

What girlNow reads in her bosom as clearAs Rebekah read, when she sateAt eve by the palm-shaded well?Who guards in her breastAs deep, as pellucid a springOf feeling, as tranquil, as sure?

What bard,At the height of his vision, can deemOf God, of the world, of the soul,With a plainness as near,As flashing, as Moses felt,When he lay in the night by his flockOn the starlit Arabian waste?Can rise and obeyThe beck of the Spirit like him?

This tract which the river of TimeNow flows through with us, is the plain.Gone is the calm of its earlier shore.Bordered by cities, and hoarseWith a thousand cries is its stream.And we on its breast, our mindsAre confused as the cries which we hear,Changing and short as the sights which we see.

And we say that repose has fledForever the course of the river of Time.That cities will crowd to its edgeIn a blacker, incessanter line;That the din will be more on its banks,Denser the trade on its stream,Flatter the plain where it flows,Fiercer the sun overhead;That never will those on its breastSee an ennobling sight,Drink of the feeling of quiet again.

But what was before us we know not,And we know not what shall succeed.

Haply, the river of Time--As it grows, as the towns on its margeFling their wavering lightsOn a wider, statelier stream--May acquire, if not the calmOf its early mountainous shore,Yet a solemn peace of its own.

And the width of the waters, the hushOf the gray expanse where he floats,Freshening its current, and spotted with foamAs it draws to the ocean, may strikePeace to the soul of the man on its breast,--As the pale waste widens around him,As the banks fade dimmer away,As the stars come out, and the night-windBrings up the streamMurmurs and scents of the infinite sea.