To Bayard Taylor

To range, deep-wrapt, along a heavenly height,O’erseeing all that man but undersees;To loiter down lone alleys of delight,And hear the beating of the hearts of trees,And think the thoughts that lilies speak in whiteBy greenwood pools and pleasant passages;

With healthy dreams a-dream in flesh and soul,To pace, in mighty meditations drawn,From out the forest to the open knollWhere much thyme is, whence blissful leagues of lawnBetwixt the fringing woods to southward rollBy tender inclinations; mad with dawn,

Ablaze with fires that flame in silver dewWhen each small globe doth glass the morning-star,Long ere the sun, sweet-smitten through and throughWith dappled revelations read afar,Suffused with saintly ecstasies of blueAs all the holy eastern heavens are, —

To fare thus fervid to what daily toilEmploys thy spirit in that larger LandWhere thou art gone; to strive, but not to moilIn nothings that do mar the artist’s hand,Not drudge unriched, as grain rots back to soil, —No profit out of death, —going, yet still at stand, —

Giving what life is here in hand to-dayFor that that’s in to-morrow’s bush, perchance, —Of this year’s harvest none in the barn to lay,All sowed for next year’s crop, —a dull advanceIn curves that come but by another wayBack to the start, —a thriftless thrift of ants

Whose winter wastes their summer; O my Friend,Freely to range, to muse, to toil, is thine:Thine, now, to watch with Homer sails that bendUnstained by Helen’s beauty o’er the brineTow’rds some clean Troy no Hector need defendNor flame devour; or, in some mild moon’s shine,

Where amiabler winds the whistle heed,To sail with Shelley o’er a bluer sea,And mark Prometheus, from his fetters freed,Pass with Deucalion over Italy,While bursts the flame from out his eager reedWild-stretching towards the West of destiny;

Or, prone with Plato, Shakespeare and a throngOf bards beneath some plane-tree’s cool eclipseTo gaze on glowing meads where, lingering long,Psyche’s large Butterfly her honey sips;Or, mingling free in choirs of German song,To learn of Goethe’s life from Goethe’s lips;

These, these are thine, and we, who still are dead,Do yearn—nay, not to kill thee back againInto this charnel life, this lowlihead,Not to the dark of sense, the blinking brain,The hugged delusion drear, the hunger fedOn husks of guess, the monarchy of pain,

The cross of love, the wrench of faith, the shameOf science that cannot prove proof is, the twistOf blame for praise and bitter praise for blame,The silly stake and tether round the wristBy fashion fixed, the virtue that doth claimThe gains of vice, the lofty mark that’s missed

By all the mortal space ’twixt heaven and hell,The soul’s sad growth o’er stationary friendsWho hear us from our height not well, not well,The slant of accident, the sudden bendsOf purpose tempered strong, the gambler’s spell,The son’s disgrace, the plan that e’er depends

On others’ plots, the tricks that passion plays(I loving you, you him, he none at all),The artist’s pain—to walk his blood-stained ways,A special soul, yet judged as general—The endless grief of art, the sneer that slays,The war, the wound, the groan, the funeral pall—

Not into these, bright spirit, do we yearnTo bring thee back, but oh, to be, to beUnbound of all these gyves, to stretch, to spurnThe dark from off our dolorous lids, to seeOur spark, Conjecture, blaze and sunwise burn,And suddenly to stand again by thee!

Ah, not for us, not yet, by thee to stand:For us, the fret, the dark, the thorn, the chill;For us, to call across unto thy Land,“Friend, get thee to the minstrels’ holy hill,And kiss those brethren for us, mouth and hand,And make our duty to our master Will.”