The Youth of Nature

Raised are the dripping oars,Silent the boat! The lake,Lovely and soft as a dream,Swims in the sheen of the moon.The mountains stand at its headClear in the pure June-night,But the valleys are flooded with haze.Rydal and Fairfield are there;In the shadow Wordsworth lies dead.So it is, so it will be for aye.Nature is fresh as of old,Is lovely; a mortal is dead.

The spots which recall him survive,For he lent a new life to these hills.The Pillar still broods o’er the fieldsWhich border Ennerdale Lake,And Egremont sleeps by the sea.The gleam of The Evening StarTwinkles on Grasmere no more,But ruined and solemn and grayThe sheepfold of Michael survives;And far to the south, the heathStill blows in the Quantock coombs,By the favorite waters of Ruth.These survive! Yet not without pain,Pain and dejection to-night,Can I feel that their poet is gone.

He grew old in an age he condemned.He looked on the rushing decayOf the times which had sheltered his youth;Felt the dissolving throesOf a social order he loved;Outlived his brethren, his peers;And, like the Theban seer,Died in his enemies’ day.

Cold bubbled the spring of Tilphusa,Copais lay bright in the moon,Helicon glassed in the lakeIts firs, and afar rose the peaksOf Parnassus, snowily clear;Thebes was behind him in flames,And the clang of arms in his ear,When his awe-struck captors ledThe Theban seer to the spring.Tiresias drank and died.Nor did reviving ThebesSee such a prophet again.

Well may we mourn, when the headOf a sacred poet lies lowIn an age which can rear them no more!The complaining millions of menDarken in labor and pain;But he was a priest to us allOf the wonder and bloom of the world,Which we saw with his eyes, and were glad.He is dead, and the fruit-bearing dayOf his race is past on the earth;And darkness returns to our eyes.

For, oh! is it you, is it you,Moonlight, and shadow, and lake,And mountains, that fill us with joy,Or the poet who sings you so well?Is it you, O beauty, O grace,O charm, O romance, that we feel,Or the voice which reveals what you are?Are ye, like daylight and sun,Shared and rejoiced in by all?Or are ye immersed in the massOf matter, and hard to extract,Or sunk at the core of the worldToo deep for the most to discern?Like stars in the deep of the sky,Which arise on the glass of the sage,But are lost when their watcher is gone.

“They are here,”--I heard, as men heardIn Mysian Ida the voiceOf the mighty Mother, or Crete,The murmur of Nature, reply,--“Loveliness, magic, grace,They are here! they are set in the world,They abide; and the finest of soulsHath not been thrilled by them all,Nor the dullest been dead to them quite.The poet who sings them may die,But they are immortal and live,For they are the life of the world.Will ye not learn it, and know,When ye mourn that a poet is dead,That the singer was less than his themes,Life, and emotion, and I?

“More than the singer are these.Weak is the tremor of painThat thrills in his mournfullest chordTo that which once ran through his soul.Cold the elation of joyIn his gladdest, airiest song,To that which of old in his youthFilled him and made him divine.Hardly his voice at its bestGives us a sense of the awe,The vastness, the grandeur, the gloom,Of the unlit gulf of himself.

“Ye know not yourselves; and your bards--The clearest, the best, who have readMost in themselves--have beheldLess than they left unrevealed.Ye express not yourselves: can ye makeWith marble, with color, with word,What charmed you in others re-live?Can thy pencil, O artist! restoreThe figure, the bloom of thy love,As she was in her morning of spring?Canst thou paint the ineffable smileOf her eyes as they rested on thine?Can the image of life have the glow,The motion of life itself?

“Yourselves and your fellows ye know not; and me,The mateless, the one, will ye know?Will ye scan me, and read me, and tellOf the thoughts that ferment in my breast,My longing, my sadness, my joy?Will ye claim for your great ones the giftTo have rendered the gleam of my skies,To have echoed the moan of my seas,Uttered the voice of my hills?When your great ones depart, will ye say,--All things have suffered a loss,Nature is hid in their grave?

“Race after race, man after man,Have thought that my secret was theirs,Have dreamed that I lived but for them,That they were my glory and joy.--They are dust, they are changed, they are gone!I remain.”