Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/215

HAWTHORNE The manifold bright surges of her deep

Gave him their light. Within her voice's call

She lured him on, by roadways overhung

With elms, that he might keep

Remembrance of her legends as they fall

Her shaded walks and gabled roofs among.

Within the mists she drew,

Anon, his silent footsteps, as her own

Were led of old, until he came to be

An eremite, whose life the desert knew,

And gained companionship in dreams alone.

The world, it seemed, had naught for such as he,—

For one who in his heart's deep wilderness

Shrunk darkling, and, whatever wind might blow,

Found no quick use for potent hands and fain,

No chance that might express

To humankind the thoughts which moved him so.

O, deem not those long years were quite in vain!

For his was the brave soul

Which, touched with fire, dwells not on whatsoever

Its outer senses hold in their intent,

But, sleepless even in sleep, must gather toll

Of dreams which pass like barks upon the river

And make each vision Beauty's instrument;

That from its own love Love's delight can tell,

And from its own grief guess the shrouded Sorrow;

From its own joyousness of Joy can sing;

That can predict so well

From its own dawn the lustre of to-morrow,

The whole flight from the flutter of the wing.

And his the gift which sees

A revelation and a tropic sign

In the lone passion-flower, and can discover

The likeness of the far Antipodes, 185