Page:The poems of George Eliot (Crowell, 1884).djvu/423

 Lying all clear in the calm morning land.

Maybe 't is wiser not to fix a lens

Too scrutinizing on the glorious times

When Barbarossa shall arise and shake

His mountain, good King Arthur come again,

And all the heroes of such giant soul

That, living once to cheer mankind with hope,

They had to sleep until the time was ripe

For greater deeds to match their greater thought.

Yet no! the earth yields nothing more Divine

Than high prophetic vision—than the Seer

Who fasting from man's meaner joy beholds

The paths of beauteous order, and constructs

A fairer type, to shame our low content.

But prophecy is like potential sound

Which turned to music seems a voice sublime

From out the soul of light; but turns to noise

In scrannel pipes, and makes all ears averse.

The faith that life on earth is being shaped

To glorious ends, that order, justice, love,

Mean man's completeness, mean effect as sure

As roundness in the dew-drop—that great faith

Is but the rushing and expanding stream

Of thought, of feeling, fed by all the past.

Our finest hope is finest memory,

As they who love in age think youth is blest

Because it has a life to fill with love.

Full souls are double mirrors, making still

An endless vista of fair things before

Repeating things behind: so faith is strong

Only when we are strong, shrinks when we shrink.

It comes when music stirs us, and the chords

Moving on some grand climax shake our souls

With influx new that makes new energies.