Tending the flocks no more to bleed for thee, - The songs of maidens pressing with white feet The vintage on thine altars poured no more, The murmurous bliss of lovers, underneath Dim grape-vine bowers, the hive-like hum Of peaceful commonwealths, where sunburnt Toil Reaps for itself the rich earth made its own By its own labor, lightened with glad hymns To an omnipotence which thy mad bolts Would cope with as a spark with the vast sea,- Even the spirit of true love and peace, Duty's sure recompense through life and death, – These are such harvests as all master-spirits Reap, haply not on earth, but reap no less Because the sheaves are bound by hands not theirs; These are the bloodless daggers wherewithal They stab fallen tyrants, this their high revenge : For their best part of life on earth is when, Long after death, prisoned and pent no more, Their thoughts, their wild dreams even, have become Part of the necessary air men breathe;
When, like the moon, herself behind a cloud,
They shed down light before us on life's sea,
That cheers us to steer onward still in hope. Earth with her twining memories ivies o'er Their holy sepulchres; the chainless sea, In tempest or wide calm, repeats their thoughts ; The lightning and the thunder, all free things, Have legends of them for the ears of men. All other glories are as falling stars,
But universal Nature watches theirs : Such strength is won by love of human kind.
Not that I feel that hunger after fame,
Which souls of a half-greatness are beset with ;
But that the memory of noble deeds Cries shame upon the idle and the vile, And keeps the heart of man forever up To the heroic level of old time.
To be forgot at first is little pain
To a heart conscious of such high intent As must be deathless on the lips of men ; But, having been a name, to sink and be A something which the world can do without, Which, having been or not, would never change The lightest pulse of fate, this is indeed
A cup of bitterness the worst to taste, And this thy heart shall empty to the dregs. Endless despair shall be thy Caucasus, And memory thy vulture; thou wilt find Oblivion far lonelier than this peak, Behold thy destiny! Thou think'st it much That I should brave thee, miserable god! But I have braved a mightier than thou,
Even the tempting of this soaring heart,
Which might have made me, scarcely less than thou, A god among my brethren weak and blind,— Scarce less than thou, a pitiable thing
To be down-trodden into darkness soon. But now I am above thee, for thou art The bungling workmanship of fear, the block That awes the swart Barbarian; but I Am what myself have made, a nature wise With finding in itself the types of all, - With watching from the dim verge of the time What things to be are visible in the gleams Thrown forward on them from the luminous past, - Wise with the history of its own frail heart, With reverence of sorrow, and with love Broad as the world, for freedom and for man,
Thou and all strength shall crumble, except Love, By whom and for whose glory ye shall cease: And, when thou art but a dim moaning heard From out the pitiless gloom of Chaos, I Shall be a power and a memory,
A name to fright all tyrants with, a light Unsetting as the pole-star, a great voice Heard in the breathless pauses of the fight By truth and freedom ever waged with wrong; Clear as a silver trumpet, to awake
Huge echoes that from age to age live on
In kindred spirits, giving them a sense
Of boundless power from boundless suffering wrung: And many a glazing eye shall smile to see The memory of my triumph, (for to meet Wrong with endurance, and to overcome The present with a heart that looks beyond, Is triumph,) like a prophet eagle, perch Upon the sacred banner of the Right. Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay Leaving it richer for the growth of truth;
But Good, once put in action or in thought,
Like a strong oak, doth from its boughs shed down The ripe germs of a forest. Thou, weak god, Shalt fade and be forgotten! but this soul, Fresh-living still in the serene abyss,
In every heaving shall partake, that grows From heart to heart among the sons of men, As the ominous hum before the earthquake runs Far through the Ægean from roused isle to isle, - Foreboding wreck to palaces and shrines, And mighty rents in many a cavernous error That darkens the free light to man : - This heart, Unscarred by thy grim vulture, as the truth
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