The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 18, April, 1859

From darkness coming and in darkness lost,
Before thy solemn Pentecost,
Dawning within the soul, shall give
The burning utterance of its flaming tongue,—
The boon whereby to other souls we live!
Thy worlds are flashing with immortal splendor,
For human speech on heights of human song
Faintly to render,
And pour back along
Its mountain grandeur, the accumulate rain
Of star-light, dream-light, thoughts of joy and pain,
Of love, hate, right and wrong,
In floods of utterance sublime and strong,
In dewy effluence beautiful and tender.

The kindred darknesses
Of caverned earth and fathomless thought,
Of Life and Death, and their twin mysteries,
Before and After, on my spirit press
Tempting and awful, with high promise fraught,
And guardian terrors, whose out-flashing swords
Beleaguer Paradise and the holy Tree
Sciential. Step by step the way is fought
That leads from Darkness, through her miscreant hordes,
Back to the heavens of wise, and true, and free:
Minerva's Gorgon, Ammon's cyclic Asp,
And the fierce flame-sword of the Cherubim,
That flashed like hate across the pallid gasp
Of exiled Eve and Adam, flare, and glare,
And hiss venenate, round the steps of him
Who thirsts for heavenly Wisdom, if he dare
Climb to her bosom, or with artless grasp
Pluck the sweet fruits that hang around him, ripe and fair.

Oh! glorious Youth
Is the true age of prophecy, when Truth
Stands bared in beauty, and the young blood boils
To hurl us in her arms, before the blur
Of time makes dim her rounded form,
Or the cold blood recoils
From the polluted swarm
Of armed Chimeras that environ her.
But worthy Age to ripened fruit shall bring
The glorious blooming of its hopeful spring,
And pile the garners of immortal Truth
With sheaves of golden grain,
To sow the world again,
And fill the eager wants of the New Age's youth.

A thousand flashes of uncertain light
Cleave the thick darkness, driving far athwart
The up-piled glooms, as lightnings plough their bright
Fire-furrows through the barren cloud
They sow with thunders. Thought on burning thought
Shatters the doubts and terrors which have bowed
Weak hearts on weaker leaning in a crowd
Self-crushing and self-fettering; gleams are caught
From some far centre set by God to keep
His brave world spinning, or some drifting isle
Of swift wildfire shot out by the wide sweep
Of wings demoniac,
Far winnowing and black,
Our cheated souls to 'wilder and beguile.
Only the years, the imperturbable,
Impassionate years, can sheave the scattered rays
Into one sun, these mingled arrows tell
Each to its quiver, the divine and fell,
And life's lone meteors to their centre trace.

O Father, let me not die young!
Earth's beauty asks a heart and tongue
To give true love and praises to her worth;
Her sins and judgment-sufferings call
For fearless martyrs to redeem thy Earth
From her disastrous fall.
For though her summer hills and vales might seem
The fair creation of a poet's dream,—
Ay, of the Highest Poet,
Whose wordless rhythms are chanted by the gyres
Of constellate star-choirs,

That with deep melody flow and overflow it,—
The sweet Earth,—very sweet, despite
The rank grave-smell forever drifting in
Among the odors from her censers white
Of wave-swung lilies and of wind-swung roses,—
The Earth sad-sweet is deeply attaint with sin!
The pure air, which incloses
Her and her starry kin,
Still shudders with the unspent palpitating
Of a great Curse, that to its utmost shore
Thrills with a deadly shiver
Which has not ceased to quiver
Down all the ages, nathless the strong beating
Of Angel-wings, and the defiant roar
Of Earth's Titanic thunders.

Fair and sad,
In sin and beauty, our beloved Earth
Has need of all her sons to make her glad;