Page:The poems of George Eliot (Crowell, 1884).djvu/319

 But Tubal's hammer rang from far away,

Tubal alone would keep no holiday,

His furnace must not slack for any feast,

For of all hardship work he counted least;

He scorned all rest but sleep, where every dream

Made his repose more potent action seem.

Yet with health's nectar some strange thirst was blent,

The fateful growth, the unnamed discontent,

The inward shaping toward some unborn power,

Some deeper-breathing act, the being's flower.

After all gestures, words, and speech of eyes,

The soul had more to tell, and broke in sighs.

Then from the east, with glory on his head

Such as low-slanting beams on corn-waves spread,

Came Jubal with his lyre: there 'mid the throng,

Where the blank space was, poured a solemn song,

Touching his lyre to full harmonic throb

And measured pulse, with cadences that sob,

Exult and cry, and search the inmost deep

Where the dark sources of new passion sleep.

Joy took the air, and took each breathing soul,

Embracing them in one entrancéd whole,

Yet thrilled each varying frame to various ends,

As Spring new-waking through the creature sends

Or rage or tenderness; more plenteous life

Here breeding dread, and there a fiercer strife.

He who had lived through twice three centuries,

Whose months monotonous, like trees on trees,

In hoary forests, stretched a backward maze,

Dreamed himself dimly through the travelled days

Till in clear light he paused, and felt the sun

That warmed him when he was a little one;

Felt that true heaven, the recovered past,

The dear small Known amid the Unknown vast,