OH! blessed, blessed be the Eld, Its echoes and its shades, -- The tones that from all time outswelled, The light that never fades; -- The silver-pinion'd memories, The symbol and the tale, -- The soul-enchased melodies Of merriment or bale. Oh, glory! that we wrestle So valiantly with Time, And do not alway nestle In listlessness or crime: We do not live and die Irrevocably blind, But raise our hands and sigh For' the might we left behind. Each goodly sign and mystic letter, That angel-haunted books unfold, -- We cherish more, -- we know them better, When we remember they are old; And friends, though fresh, and hale, and cheerly, And young, as annals hold, Yet, if we prize them @3very@1 dearly, We love to call them old. Yon scented shrub, -- I passed it by, The youngling of the breeze; I sat me, sad and soberly, Beneath those ancient trees, Whose branches, dight in summer pall, Their gloom in moaning wore; For' they told me of the Eld and all The mystery of yore. And in the gusts, I thought they pitied The falling of the young, -- The fair, the subtle-witted, Fine limb, and honeyed tongue; -- As man, from birth to funeral, Were but a tragic mime, -- And, they the kinsman lineal Of the good and olden prime. I saw the hoary bulk of ocean A' couching on the shore, With a ripple for its motion, And a murmur for its roar; I gazed, but not as on the dead, But as if Death were held In awe, by a thing that slumbered In the deep and silent Eld. The golden school of Eld is rife With many a God-sent ray, And jewel-gleams of perfect life, Hereditary day! Alas! we cannot quite awake, -- But when we @3feel@1 we dream, That hour, our heart is strong to shake The falsities that seem. For our bark is on the angle Of a wide and bending stream, Whose bosky banks entangle The eye's divergent beam; -- The ridgy steeps hide in the way, Whither the stream is quest, As on a lake, the mirror'd day Repeats its waveless rest. How know we, when so clearly still, Where its nether fountains be? That it welleth in a viewless hill, And passeth to the sea? The tide beneath us, -- where it welled Dull sense regardeth not, -- But it was @3once@1 the tide of Eld, And we have not @3all@1 forgot. Great Art hath bound a diadem, Upon his front serene, Whose every pure and charmed gem Bedews him with its sheen; And thus, -- nor deem it wildly new, Nor slur of idle tongue, -- But true, as God's own words are true, The Eld is alway young; -- Young as the flush of all-blue light, Or eve's imperial eyes, And he who worshippeth aright, Shall aye be young and wise, And gentle as the virgin dove That primal chaos quelled, With Nature for his ladie-love, The daughter of the Eld. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO OUR BLESSED LADY (1) by HENRY CONSTABLE ARCADIA: THE BARGAIN by PHILIP SIDNEY ELEGIAC SONNET: 4. TO THE MOON by CHARLOTTE SMITH DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS by WALT WHITMAN THE ANGEL OF PATIENCE by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER |