There still is need of martyrs and apostles,

There still are texts for never-dying song: From age to age man's still aspiring spirit

Finds wider scope and sees with clearer eyes, And thou in larger measure dost inherit

What made thy great forerunners free and wise. Sit thou enthroned where the Poet's mountain

Above the thunder lifts its silent peak,

And roll thy songs down like a gathering fountain,
That all may drink and find the rest they seek.
Sing! there shall silence grow in earth and heaven,
A silence of deep awe and wondering;

For, listening gladly, bend the angels, even,
To hear a mortal like an angel sing.

III.

Among the toil-worn poor my soul is seeking

For one to bring the Maker's name to light, To be the voice of that almighty speaking

Which every age

demands to do it right.

Proprieties our silken bards environ;

He who would be the tongue of this wide land

M

Must string his harp with chords of sturdy iron

And strike it with a toil-embrowned hand; One who hath dwelt with Nature well-attended,

Who hath learnt wisdom from her mystic books, Whose soul with all her countless lives hath blended, So that all beauty awes us in his looks;

Who not with body's waste his soul hath pampered,
Who as the clear north-western wind is free,
Who walks with Form's observances unhampered,
And follows the One Will obediently;

Whose eyes, like windows on a breezy summit,
Control a lovely prospect every way;

Who doth not sound God's sea with earthly plummet,
And find a bottom still of worthless clay;
Who heeds not how the lower gusts are working,
Knowing that one sure wind blows on above,

And sees, beneath the foulest faces lurking,

One God-built shrine of reverence and love;

Who sees all stars that wheel their shining marches Around the centre fixed of Destiny,

Where the encircling soul serene o'er arches

The moving globe of being like a sky;

Who feels that God and Heaven's great deeps are nearer

Him to whose heart his fellow-man is nigh,

Who doth not hold his soul's own freedom dearer
Than that of all his brethren, low or high;

Who to the right can feel himself the truer

For being gently patient with the wrong,

Who sees a brother in the evil doer,

And finds in Love the heart's-blood of his song ;-
This, this is he for whom the world is waiting
To sing the beatings of its mighty heart,
Too long hath it been patient with the grating
Of scrannel-pipes, and heard it misnamed Art.
To him the smiling soul of man shall listen,
Laying awhile its crown of thorns aside,
And once again in every eye shall glisten
The glory of a nature satisfied.

His verse shall have a great, commanding motion,
Heaving and swelling with a melody

Learnt of the sky, the river, and the ocean,

And all the pure, majestic things that be.

Awake, then, thou! we pine for thy great presence To make us feel the soul once more sublime,

We are of far too infinite an essence

To rest contented with the lies of Time.

Speak out! and, lo! a hush of deepest wonder
Shall sink o'er all his many-voiced scene,

As when a sudden burst of rattling thunder
Shatters the blueness of a sky serene.

1841.

THE MOON.

My soul was like the sea,
Before the moon was made,

Moaning in vague immensity,

Of its own strength afraid,

Unrestful and unstaid.

Through every rift it foamed in vain,

About its earthly prison,

Seeking some unknown thing in pain,

And sinking restless back again,

For yet no moon had risen :

Its only voice a vast, dumb moan,

Of utterless anguish speaking,

It lay unhopefully alone,

And lived but in an aimless seeking.