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| THE EVERLASTING 1 universe of things | |
| Flows thro’ the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, | |
| Now dark, now glittering, now reflecting gloom, | |
| Now lending splendour, where from secret springs | |
| The source of human thought its tribute brings | 5 |
| Of waters, with a sound but half its own … | |
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| Thou art the path of that unresting sound, | |
| Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee | |
| I seem as in a trance sublime and strange | |
| To muse on my own separate phantasy, | 10 |
| My own, my human mind, which passively | |
| Now renders and receives fast influencings, | |
| Holding an unremitting interchange | |
| With the clear universe of things around; | |
| One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings | 15 |
| Now float above thy darkness, and now rest | |
| Where that or thou art no unbidden guest, | |
| In the still cave of the witch Poesy, | |
| Seeking among the shadows that pass by, | |
| Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee, | 20 |
| Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast | |
| From which they fled recalls them, thou art there! | |
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| Some say that gleams of a remoter world | |
| Visit the soul in sleep,—that death is slumber, | |
| And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber | 25 |
| Of those who wake and live. I look on high; | |
| Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled | |
| The veil of life and death? or do I lie | |
| In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep | |
| Spread far around and inaccessibly | 30 |
| Its circles? For the very spirit fails, | |
| Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep | |
| That vanishes among the viewless gales! | |
| Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, | |
| Mont Blanc appears,—still, snowy, and serene: | 35 |
| Its subject mountains their unearthly forms | |
| Pile around it, ice and rock … | |
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| Is this the scene | |
| Where the old Earthquake-dæmon taught her young | |
| Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea | 40 |
| Of fire envelope once this silent snow? | |
| None can reply: all seems eternal now. | |
| The wilderness has a mysterious tongue | |
| Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild, | |
| So solemn, so serene, that man may be | 45 |
| But for such faith with nature reconciled. | |
| Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal | |
| Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood | |
| By all, but which the wise, and great, and good | |
| Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel. | 50 |
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| The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, | |
| Ocean, and all the living things that dwell | |
| Within the dædal earth; lightning, and rain, | |
| Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane; | |
| The torpor of the year when feeble dreams | 55 |
| Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep | |
| Holds every future leaf and flower; the bound | |
| With which from that detested trance they leap; | |
| The works and ways of man, their death and birth, | |
| And that of him, and all that his may be;— | 60 |
| All things that move and breathe with toil and sound | |
| Are born and die; revolve, subside, and swell. | |
| Power dwells apart in its tranquillity, | |
| Remote, serene, and inaccessible … | |
