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| LO, as some bard on isles of the Aegean | |
| Lovely and eager when the earth was young, | |
| Burning to hurl his heart into a paean, | |
| Praise of the hero from whose loins he sprung;— | |
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| He, I suppose, with such a care to carry, | 5 |
| Wander’d disconsolate and waited long, | |
| Smiting his breast, wherein the notes would tarry, | |
| Chiding the slumber of the seed of song: | |
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| Then in the sudden glory of a minute | |
| Airy and excellent the proem came, | 10 |
| Rending his bosom, for a god was in it, | |
| Waking the seed, for it had burst in flame. | |
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| So even I athirst for his inspiring, | |
| I who have talk’d with Him forget again, | |
| Yes, many days with sobs and with desiring | 15 |
| Offer to God a patience and a pain; | |
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| Then through the mid complaint of my confession, | |
| Then through the pang and passion of my prayer, | |
| Leaps with a start the shock of his possession, | |
| Thrills me and touches, and the Lord is there. | 20 |
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| Lo, if some pen should write upon your rafter | |
| MENE and MENE in the folds of flame, | |
| Think you could any memories thereafter | |
| Wholly retrace the couplet as it came? | |
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| Lo, if some strange intelligible thunder | 25 |
| Sang to the earth the secret of a star, | |
| Scarce could ye catch, for terror and for wonder, | |
| Shreds of the story that was peal’d so far. | |
| |
| Scarcely I catch the words of his revealing, | |
| Hardly I hear Him, dimly understand, | 30 |
| Only the Power that is within me pealing | |
| Lives on my lips and beckons to my hand. | |
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| Whose has felt the Spirit of the Highest | |
| Cannot confound nor doubt Him nor deny: | |
| Yea, with one voice, O world, though thou deniest, | 35 |
| Stand thou on that side, for on this am I. | |
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| Rather the earth shall doubt when her retrieving | |
| Pours in the rain and rushes from the sod, | |
| Rather than he for whom the great conceiving | |
| Stirs in his soul to quicken into God. | 40 |
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| Ay, though thou then shouldst strike him from his glory | |
| Blind and tormented, madden’d and alone, | |
| Even on the cross would he maintain his story, | |
| Yes, and in hell would whisper, I have known. | |
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