The Poet’s Impulse

From “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” Canto III.   SKY, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! ye   With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul   To make these felt and feeling, well may be   Things that have made me watchful; the far roll   Of your departing voices is the knoll   Of what in me is sleepless,—if I rest.   But where of ye, O tempests! is the goal?   Are ye like those within the human breast? Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high nest?   Could I embody and unbosom now   That which is most within me,—could I wreak   My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw   Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or weak,   All that I would have sought, and all I seek,   Bear, know, feel, and yet breathe—into one word,   And that one word were Lightning, I would speak;   But as it is, I live and die unheard, With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword.