Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/231

ARIEL Their elemental force had roused to might

Great Nature's child in this her realm supreme,—

From their commingling he had guessed aright

The plenitude of all we know or dream.

Read thou aright his vision and his song,

That this enfranchised spirit of the spheres

May know his name henceforth shall take no wrong,

Outbroadening still yon ocean and these years!

1888.

ARIEL

1792

thou on earth to-day, immortal one,

How wouldst thou, in the starlight of thine eld,

The likeness of that morntide look upon

Which men beheld?

How might it move thee, imaged in time's glass,

As when the tomb has kept

Unchanged the face of one who slept

Too soon, yet moulders not, though seasons come and pass?

Has Death a wont to stay the soul no less?

And art thou still what was erewhile,—

A feeling born of music's restlessness—

A child's swift smile

Between its sobs—a wandering mist that rose

At dawn—a cloud that hung

The Euganéan hills among;

Thy voice, a wind-harp's strain in some enchanted close?

Thyself the wild west wind, O boy divine,

Thou fain wouldst be,—the spirit which in its breath

Wooes yet the seaward ilex and the pine

That wept thy death? 201