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(Born December 16, 1770)
I. THOU dost not sing of sorrow, being too vast | |
| For puny personalities of woe; | |
| Nor yet of joy: thy fateful measures flow | |
| From springs too deep to sparkle, overcast | |
| With midnight and immensity. The past | 5 |
| Is not thy theme, for all thy concords glow | |
| With living fervor. And this present show | |
| Seems lost in thy infinity at last. | |
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| What is thy message, what thy mystery? | |
| —Or shall we ask what doctrine gilds the day; | 10 |
| What creed the clouds unfold,—the hills, the sea? | |
| All things they tell,—or nothing. He alone | |
| Who loves can learn, when Nature points the way | |
| Or thou dost breathe the beautiful in tone. | |
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II. Yet thou hast gentler moments when thy might, | 15 |
| No longer tuned to a supernal key, | |
| Is modulated by humanity; | |
| And in thy symphony the other night | |
| A hero’s clarion sounded through the fight, | |
| A maiden’s laughter rippled peacefully, | 20 |
| And love and sorrow woke a threnody | |
| To speed a deathless spirit in its flight. | |
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| O sweetly human, splendidly divine!— | |
| Not like a turbid torrent threading far | |
| And fathomless abysses, thou dost shine | 25 |
| A clear, full flood wherein we joy to scan | |
| The cloud, the snowy summit and the star,— | |
| The flower, the forest and the face of man. | |
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