Pre-Existence

Paul Hamilton Hayne (1830–1886)

WHILE sauntering through the crowded street,

Some half-remembered face I meet,

Albeit upon no mortal shore

That face, methinks, has smiled before.

Lost in a gay and festal throng,

I tremble at some tender song,—

Set to an air whose golden bars

I must have heard in other stars.

In sacred aisles I pause to share

The blessings of a priestly prayer,—

When the whole scene which greets mine eyes

In some strange mode I recognize

As one whose every mystic part

I feel prefigured in my heart.

At sunset, as I calmly stand,

A stranger on an alien strand,

Familiar as my childhood’s home

Seems the long stretch of wave and foam.

One sails toward me o’er the bay,

And what he comes to do and say

I can foretell. A prescient lore

Springs from some life outlived of yore.

O swift, instinctive, startling gleams

Of deep soul-knowledge! not as dreams

For aye ye vaguely dawn and die,

But oft with lightning certainty

Pierce through the dark, oblivious brain,

To make old thoughts and memories plain,

Thoughts which perchance must travel back

Across the wild, bewildering track

Of countless æons; memories far,

High-reaching as yon pallid star,

Unknown, scarce seen, whose flickering grace

Faints on the outmost rings of space!