Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/258

222 Seethed in mists of Penmanmaur,

Taught by Plinlimmon's Druid power,

England's genius filled all measure

Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,

Gave to the mind its emperor,

And life was larger than before:

Nor sequent centuries could hit

Orbit and sum of 's wit.

The men who lived with him became

Poets, for the air was fame.

Far in the North, where polar night

Holds in check the frolic light,

In trance upborne past mortal goal

The Swede leads the soul.

Through snows above, mines underground,

The inks of Erebus he found;

Rehearsed to men the damnèd wails

On which the seraph music sails.

In spirit-worlds he trod alone,

But walked the earth unmarked, unknown.

The near bystander caught no sound,—

Yet they who listened far aloof

Heard rendings of the skyey roof,

And felt, beneath, the quaking ground;

And his air-sown, unheeded words,

In the next age, are flaming swords.