Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). Complete Poetical Works. 1893.
Birds of PassageFlight the First. Epimetheus, or the Poets Afterthought
H
What I saw as in a vision,
When to marches hymeneal
In the land of the Ideal
Moved my thought o’er Fields Elysian?
Seemed like sunshine gleaming round me?
These the wild, bewildering fancies,
That with dithyrambic dances
As with magic circles bound-me?
Pallid cheeks, and haggard bosoms!
Spectral gleam their snow-white dresses,
And from loose, dishevelled tresses
Fall the hyacinthine blossoms!
Filled my heart with secret rapture!
Children of my golden leisures!
Must even your delights and pleasures
Fade and perish with the capture?
When they came to me unbidden;
Voices single, and in chorus,
Like the wild birds singing o’er us
In the dark of branches hidden.
Must each noble aspiration
Come at last to this conclusion,
Jarring discord, wild confusion,
Lassitude, renunciation?
From the sun’s serene dominions,
Not through brighter realms nor vaster,
In swift ruin and disaster,
Icarus fell with shattered pinions!
Why did mighty Jove create thee
Coy as Thetis, fair as Flora,
Beautiful as young Aurora,
If to win thee is to hate thee?
Of unrest and long resistance
Is but passionate appealing,
A prophetic whisper stealing
O’er the chords of our existence.
Thou, beloved, never leavest;
In life’s discord, strife, and clamor,
Still he feels thy spell of glamour;
Him of Hope thou ne’er bereavest.
Struggling souls by thee are strength ened,
Clouds of fear asunder rifted,
Truth from falsehood cleansed and sifted,
Lives, like days in summer, lengthened!
O my Sibyl, my deceiver!
For thou makest each mystery clearer,
And the unattained seems nearer,
When thou fillest my heart with fever!
Though the fields around us wither,
There are ampler realms and spaces,
Where no foot has left its traces:
Let us turn and wander thither!