Poet who sleepest by this wandering wave! When thou wast born, what birth-gift hadst thou then? To thee what wealth was that the Immortals gave, The wealth thou gavest in thy turn to men? Not Milton’s keen, translunar music thine; Not Shakespeare’s cloudless, boundless human view; Not Shelley’s flush of rose on peaks divine; Nor yet the wizard twilight Coleridge knew. What hadst thou that could make so large amends For all thou hadst not and thy peers possessed, Motion and fire, swift means to radiant ends?— Thou hadst for weary feet the gift of rest. From Shelley’s dazzling glow or thunderous haze, From Byron’s tempest-anger, tempest-mirth, Men turned to thee and found—not blast and blaze, Tumult of tottering heavens, but peace on earth. Nor peace that grows by Lethe, scentless flower, There in white languors to decline and cease; But peace whose names are also rapture, power, Clear sight, and love: for these are parts of peace.
From “Wordsworth’s Grave”
More from Poet
-
She stands, a thousand-wintered tree, By countless morns impearled; Her broad roots coil beneath the sea, Her branches sweep the world; Her seeds, by careless winds conveyed, Clothe the remotest strand With forests from her scatterings made, New nations fostered in her shade, And linking...
-
From “The Purple East” WHAT profits it, O England, to prevail In camp and mart and council, and bestrew With argosies thy oceans, and renew With tribute levied on each golden gale Thy treasuries, if thou canst hear the wail Of women martyred by the turbaned crew, Whose tenderest mercy...
-
(6th October, 1892) LOW, like another’s, lies the laurelled head: The life that seemed a perfect song is o’er: Carry the last great bard to his last bed. Land that he loved, thy noblest voice is mute. Land that he loved, that loved him! nevermore Meadow of thine, smooth lawn or wild seashore,...
-
Poet who sleepest by this wandering wave! When thou wast born, what birth-gift hadst thou then? To thee what wealth was that the Immortals gave, The wealth thou gavest in thy turn to men? Not Milton’s keen, translunar music thine; Not Shakespeare’s cloudless, boundless human view; Not...