I. ON the high road travelling steady, Sure, alert, and ever ready, Prompt to seize all fit occasion, Courting power and wealth and station; One clear aim before him keeping With a vigilance unsleeping; Prizing most the ephemeral flower Blooming for a brilliant hour; With self-conscious action moving; Well known truths intent on proving; Radiant in his day and season With the world's reflected reason; Noting times, effects, and causes, Phaon wins the crowd's applauses. II. Wing'd like an eagle o'er mountains and meadows, Lit by their splendors or hid by their shadows; Borne by a power supernal, resistless; Dreaming through trances abstracted and listless; Swooping capricious to faults and to errors, Redeemed by a virtue unconscious of terrors; Linking with ease his result and endeavor; Opening through chaos fresh pathways forever; Gilding the world with his thoughts and his fancies; Scornful of fashions and heedless of chances; Yet in obscurity living and dying -- Hylas, a voice in the wilderness crying, Only is heard when no hand can restore him, Only is known when the grave closes o'er him. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MOUNTAIN PICTURES: 2. MONADNOCK FROM WACHUSETT by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER THE BARTHOLDI STATUE by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER THE LOST COLORS by MARY A. BARR THE DEBT by KATHARINE LEE BATES REMARKS TO THE BACK OF A PEW by WILLIAM ROSE BENET THE HAPPY FOOL by WILLIAM ROSE BENET THE LOVER'S VIGIL by WILLIAM ROSE BENET GLIMPSES OF ITALY: 3. OLD STORY-TELLING by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON |