READING in Omar till the thoughts that burned Upon his pages seemed to be inurned Within me in a silent fire, my pen By instinct to his flowing metre turned. Vine-crowned free-thinker of thy Persian clime -- Brave bard whose daring thought and mystic rhyme Through English filter trickles down to us Out of the lost springs of an olden time -- Baffled by life's enigmas, like the crowd Who strove before and since to see the cloud Lift from the mountain pinnacles of faith -- We honor still the doubts thou hast avowed, And fain would round the hail-truth of thy dream; And fain let in -- if so we might -- a beam Of purer light through windows of the soul, Dividing things that are from things that seem. True, true, brave poet, in thy cloud involved, The riddle of the world stood all unsolved; And we who boast our broader views still grope Too oft like thee, though centuries have revolved. Yet this we know. Thy symbol of the jar Suits not our western manhood, left to mar Or make, in part, the clay 't is moulded of: And the soul's freedom is its fateful star. Not like thy ball thrown from the player's hand Inert and passive on a yielding strand; Or if a ball, the rock whence it rebounds Proves that e'en this some license may command. But though thy mind, which measured Jove and Mars, Lay fettered from the Unseen by bolts and bars Of circumstance, one truth thy spirit saw, The mystery spanning life and earth and stars. Dervish and threatening dogma were thy foes. The question though unanswered still arose; And through the revel and the wine-cups still The honest thought, "Who knows, but One -- who knows?" And as I read again each fervent line That smiles through sighs, and drips with fragrant wine; And Vedder's thoughtful muse has graced the verse With added jewels from the artist's mine -- I read a larger meaning in the sage, A modern comment on a far-off age; And take the truth, and leave the error out That casts its light stain on the Asian page. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE VOICE OF THE BANJO by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR THE END OF THE PLAY by WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY THE DEATH OF HARRISON by NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS PATRIOTIC SONG by ERNST MORITZ ARNDT THE LAKE by HELEN BIRCH-BARTLETT |