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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Fragments from 'Genius Lost</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Prelude<br> I SEE the boy-bard neath life’s morning skies,<br> While hope’s bright cohorts guess not of defeat,<br> And ardour lightens from his earnest eyes,<br>And faith’s cherubic wings around his being beat. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Loudly the echo of his soul repeats<br> Those deathless strains that witched the world of old;<br> While to the deeds, his high heart proudly beats,<br>Of names within them, treasured like heroic gold. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> To love he lights the ode of vocal fire,<br> And yearns in song o’er freedom’s sacred throes,<br> Or pours a pious incense from his lyre,<br>Wherever o’er the grave a martyre-glory glows. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Or as he wanders waking dreams arise,<br> And paint new Edens on the future’s scroll,<br> While on the wings of rapture he outflies<br>The faltering mood that warns in his prophetic soul. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> “All doubt away!” he cries in trustful mood;<br> “From Time’s unknown the perfect yet shall rise;<br> And this full heart attests how much of God<br>Might dwell with man beneath these purple-clouded skies!” </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Thus holiest shapes inhabit his desire,<br> And love’s dream-turtles sing along his way;<br> Thus faith keeps mounting, like a skylark, higher,<br>As hope engoldens more the morning of his day. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But ah! Too high that harp-like heart is strung,<br> To bear the jar of this harsh world’s estate;<br> And ’tis betrayed by that too fervent tongue<br>How burns the fire within, that bodes a wayward fate. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Soon on the morning’s wings shall fancy flee,<br> And world-damps quench love’s spiritual flame,<br> And his wild powers, now as the wild waves free,<br>Be reef-bound by low wants and beaten down by shame. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> Now mark him in the city’s weltering crowd<br> Haggard and pale; and yet, in his distress,<br> How quick to scorn the vile—defy the pround—<br>Grim, cold, and distant now—then seized with recklessness. <br> Yet oft what agony his pride assails,<br> When life’s first morning faith to thought appears<br> Lost in the shadowy past, and nought avails<br>Her calling to the lost—then blood is in his tears. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Henceforth must his sole comrade be despair,<br> Sole wanderer by his side in ways forlorn;<br> And as a root-wrenched vine no more may bear,<br>No more by this dry wood shall fruit be borne. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> No more! And every care of life, in woe<br> And desperation, to the wind is hurled!<br> He thanks dull wondering pity with a blow,<br>And leaps, though into hell, out of the cruel world. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>First Love<br> I, even when a child,<br>Had fondly brooded, with a glowing cheek<br>And asking heart, with lips apart, and breath<br>Hushed to such silence as the matron dove<br>Preserves while warming into life her young,<br>Over the secretely-disclosing hope<br>Of finding in the fulness of my youth<br>Some sweet, congenial one to love, to call<br>My own. And one has been whose soul<br>Felt to its depth the influence of mine,<br>Albeit between us the sweet name of Love<br>Passed never, to bring blooming to the check<br>Those rosy shames that burn it on the heart—<br>Symbol of heaven, sole synonym of God!—<br>Yet not the less a sympathy that heard,<br>Through many a whisper, Love’s sweet spirit-self,<br>Low breathing in the silence of our souls,<br>Knit us together with a still consent. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And she was beautiful in outward shape,<br>As lovely in her mind. Such eyes she had<br>As burn in the far depths of passionate thought,<br>While yet the visionary heart of youth<br>Is lonely in its hope! Cherries were ne’er<br>More ruby-rich, more delicately full,<br>Than were her lips; and, when her young heart would,<br>A smile, ineffably enchanting, played<br>The unwitting conqueress there. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Her light, round form<br>Had grace in every impulse, motions fair<br>As her life’s purity; her being all<br>Was as harmonious to the mind, as are<br>Most perfect strains of purest tones prolonged,<br>To music-loving ears. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But full of dole<br>Her mortal fate to me! Ere sixteen springs<br>Had bloomed about her being, a most fell<br>And secret malady did feel amid<br>The roses of her cheeks, her lips—but still,<br>Felon-like, shunned the lustre of her eyes,<br>That more replendent grew. And so, before<br>Those glowing orbs had turned their starry light<br>Upon one human face with other troth<br>Than a meek daughter or fond sister yields;<br>Ere her white arms and heaving bosom held<br>A nestling other than the weary head<br>Of sickness or a stranger babe, the grass<br>That whistled dry in the autumnal wind,<br>Was billowing round her grave. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And yet I live<br>Within a world that knoweth her no more. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">. . . . .<br>’Tis well when misery’s harassed son<br>For shelter to the grave doth go,<br>As to his mountain-hold may run<br> The hunted roe. <br>Yet when, beneath benignant skies,<br>The angle Grace herself appears<br>But Death’s born bride, the stoniest eyes<br> Might break in tears. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Chorus of the Hours<br> Ah! That Death<br>Should ever, like a drear, untimely night,<br>Descent upon the loved, in Love’s despite!<br> Ah! That a little breath<br>Expiring from the world, should leave each scene,<br>Where its warm influence before hath been,<br>So empty to the heart in its despair<br>Of all but misery—misery everywhere! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Thus in the morning of my life have I<br>No happiness rooted in the earth, to hold<br>My spirit to the actual. All my hopes<br>Are blown away by adverse chilling winds,<br>Blown sheer away, out of the world, to seek<br>Such solace as may be derived from far<br>And lonely flights of faith. Yet even these<br>Only divert, not satisfy, my soul;<br>Still, when her wings refuse them, wearied out<br>By so wild-will’d an aeronaut as I,<br>Having no nearer comfort, even as now,<br>Their foregone influence do I meditate,<br>Tracing them upward in their heavenward track. <br>As through an ocean of uprolling mist<br>Amid the morning Alps, a morning bird<br>Keeps soaring, trustful of the risen sun—<br>Who then is turning all the mountain tops<br>To diamond islets washed by waves of gold,<br>That shatter as they surge—keeps soaring, till<br>It shoots at length into the cloudless light,<br>And gleams a bird of fire; so faith upmounts<br>Through the earth’s misty tribulations, up<br>Into the clear of the eternal world,<br>Unfainting, fervent, till, with happy wings<br>Outspreading full amid the rays of God<br>It glories, gleaming like the Alpine bird.<br>But wearying in her flight, even faith returns,<br>As does the bird—returns into the mist<br>That shutteth down all less adventurous life,<br>But stronger for the mighty vision left<br>And for the heavenly warmth upon her wings. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Once,—did I only stand in thought beside<br>The grave of one who had for freedom died,<br>Or on some spot made holy by the vow<br>Of tuneful love, though of an ancient day,—<br>My very life would thrill—and am I now<br> Journeying away<br>From that fraternal interest which cast<br>Around me then the feeling of the past?<br>I know not; but my heart no more will leap<br>Even to the trump of some Homeric lay:<br>Bad progress is it, if from that I keep<br> Journeying away! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Misery<br>As the moaning wild waves ever<br> Fret around some lonely isle,<br>There are griefs that no endeavour<br> Stilleth even for a while,<br>Beating at my heart for ever,<br> Beating at it now,<br>Beating at my heart—and aching<br> Upward to my brow. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Like the wild clouds flying over<br> High above all human reach,<br>There are joys that I their lover<br> Cannot even scale in speech;<br>Flying o’er my head for ever<br> Flying o’er it now;<br>Flying o’er my head—and shading<br> With despair my brow. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Chorus of the Hours<br> Alas! The veriest human clod<br> Is happier than he,<br> On whom the majesty,<br> And the mystery<br>Of thought, had fallen like the fire of God!<br> Ah! Those by nature gifted to pursue<br> The beautiful and true<br> Have chiefly in dishonour trod<br>The regions they redeemed—as even yet they do! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And where are they, to gods upgrown,<br> Shall drive this darksome doom?<br> Ye suffering sons of Genius, you<br> Must dissipate the gloom<br> That clouds you even as of old<br> In its mist so deadly cold!<br> With your own injuries, let stern thought<br> Of the most desolate deathless of those<br> Who with the power of darkness fought,<br> (Each in his age, whereon his spirit rose,<br> As rises some peculiar star of night<br> To burn eternally apart,)<br> Yea, let stern thought of those<br> Now nerve you to re-urge the lengthened fight;<br> And for those others,<br> Your future brothers,<br>Now follow victory with unflinching heart! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"></a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Looking Beyond<br>Yes, it is well, in this our cold grim earth<br>To steal an hour for meditation free;<br>To die in body, and with all the mind<br>Thus freed, to bridge with might beams of thought<br>The depth of the Eternal. Even on me<br>Such mood sometimes descends, the precious gift<br>Of pitying Urania, then I fly,<br>Even as a stork mid evening’s purple clouds<br>In mid-Elysiums—Paradises fair<br>Perhaps in stars consummated, whereon<br>The once earth-treading votaries of Truth<br>In soul reside, until a period when<br>Knowledge, advancing them from height to height,<br>And Love, grown perfect, shall have nurtured forth<br>Angelic wings for heaven. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But by these<br>I mean not such as with sour faces boast;<br>Blind moles of fear, who deem thy honour God<br>By offering up on outraged human hearts,<br>As upon blood-stained altars, every gay<br>And happy feeling, every rose wish<br>That sweetens human souls: and who, convened<br>In their dull tabernacles, all at once<br>Behowl the Diety as dogs the moon,<br>Or deprecate his wrath with grovelling rites,<br>And boisterous groans, that from stentorian lungs<br>Are grunted, swine-like, forth! Oh no! For such<br>The paradise of fools full wide extends<br>Her dismal gates! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> I speak not thus in scorn;<br>Scorn is not sweet to me; but when the rights<br>Of man are trampled on; when villains sit<br>In the high places of the land, and sport<br>With what the just hold sacred; when mere wealth<br>Can win its Nestor’s favour, and the sleek<br>Regard even of its saints, and when religion<br>Itself is ever in a bad extreme—<br>A bloated pomp of mystery and show,<br>Or a most crude and coarse perversity,<br>Vile as a beggar’s raiment—then the scorn<br>Of indignation, then the brave disgust<br>Of righteous shame and honest hate, put forth<br>In tones like God’s own thunder burst aboard,<br>Are things the thin-souled scoundrel never feels. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Enough. The good I deem leave vain disputes<br>On things that are, and must be from their kind,<br>Mainly unknown, and still with faithful heed<br>Have care of those God gave them light to see<br>Strewn round their daily being: and of such<br>Rightfully choosing, and to fitting ends<br>Well shaping all, upbuild with honest hands<br>A true and simple life; and in the jars<br>Of national factions they alway, despite<br>Of frowning kings and banning priests afford<br>Their aid to freedom. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Yet will there come a day, though not to me,<br>When excellence of being shall be sought<br>Not only thus in vision, but within<br>The actual round of this diurnal world,—<br>A day whose light shall chase the clouds that veil<br>Upon the mountain tops of old repute<br>The imaginary gods of wrongful power,<br>And pierce thence downward to the vales of toil,<br>Healing and blessing all men—the great day<br>Of knowledge. Then the accident of birth—<br>That empty imposition! Or the claim<br>Of wealth—that earthly and most gnomish cheat!<br>Shall neither arrogate to any, proud<br>Distinctions as of right, nor qualify<br>Any by its sole influence for power<br>Over his fellows, but all men shall stand<br>Proudly beneath the fair wide roof of heaven,<br>As God-created equals, each the sire<br>Of his own worth, and the joint sanctioner<br>Of all political pertainment, all<br>Moral and social honour. <br> Yea, for such<br>Is Freedom’s charter traced upon the heart<br>Of our humanity, whene’er ’tis rid<br>Of the foul scroff of vice, and on the brain<br>Built godlike, when disclouded by God’s light<br>Of a too old distemper’s fatal rout,<br>Of boastful hell-suggested superstitions<br>And customs born of Error. And let none<br>Despair of such an advent; for, as when<br>Some solemn wood’s familiar cadences,<br>Deepening and deepening all around, portend<br>The salutary storm, even so the wide<br>Pervading instinct of a sure revolt<br>Against the ancient tyrannies of the earth<br>Roams on before it in the living stress<br>Of knowledge, omening the unborn change<br>By harshening still to the fine ear of thought<br>The daily jar of customary wrongs. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And let none fear that earthly power, or aught<br>Less than Omnipotence, can still or stay<br>The solemn prelude that for ever thus<br>Keeps deepening round and onward in the front<br>Of that great victory over wrong, which time<br>Shall witness—wrong and its abettors, all<br>Whom lust of sway unsanctioned by the truth<br>Shall to the last disnature; for the spirit<br>It first evokes—a mighty will to think—<br>Doth thenceforth charge it with oracular tones<br>That may not be mistaken. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Yea, great thoughts<br>With great thoughts coalescing through the world,<br>Into the future of all progress pour<br>Sun-prophecies, there quickening what were else<br>Nascent too long. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Chorus of the Hours<br>O why is not this beauteous earth<br> The Eden men imagine—the fair seat<br>Of fruitful peace, pure love, and sunny mirth?<br> And why are its prime souls, though so complete<br> In apprehension of a Godlike state,<br>The subjects ever of fraternal hate—<br> Oppressing or oppressed,<br> That so the portion is of all, deceit<br> And fear, and anger, sorrow, and unrest? </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There’s not one bright enduring thing<br> In this great round of nature that appears—<br>No shining stars, no river murmuring,<br> No morn-crowned hill, no golden evening scene,<br> That hath not glimmered and distorted been<br> Through the dim mist of tears—<br>Tears not as blood from some wrung human brain,<br>Throbbing and aching with unpitied pain! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There is not one green mound, existent long<br> In any region, nor old wayside stone,<br>On which some weary child of social wrong<br> Hath sat not—there, alone,<br>To bite his pallid lip and heave the unheeded groan! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And such hath been the state of man<br>Since first the race’s recreancy began;<br> And thus his piety is scared away<br> From earth, its proper home,<br> To seek vague heavens above the source of day;<br>Or out beyond the gorgeous gloom<br> Wherewith dusk evening curtains up the west;<br> There flying, like the psalmist’s dove, to rest<br>In sinless gardens of perpetual bloom<br> And islands of the blest. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> Ah! My heart<br>Is like a core of fire within my breast,<br>And by this agony is all my mind<br>Shaken away from its tenacious hold<br>Of time and sensuous things. Now come, thou meek<br>Religious trust, that sometime to my soul<br>Fliest friendly, like a heaven-descended dove,<br>With wings that whisper of the peace of God!<br>Come, and assure it now, that all thus seen<br>Of evil, by the patience of the One<br>Almighty Master of the Universe,<br>Is but allowed, to dash our vain repose<br>On Time’s foundations, and all mad belief<br>In human consequence; that, finally,<br>Amid the death of expectations fond,—<br>Discoveries diurnal that the pomps<br>And pleasures of the world are but bright mists<br>Concealing, mid its heights of pomp and shame,<br>Its depths of degradation,—that all weal,<br>Beauty, and peace, even in their permanence,<br>Are but the florid riches of a soil<br>That crusts the cone of some yet masked volcano,<br>Whose darling fires but wait the dread command:<br>“Up, to the work appointed! ”—we at length,<br>Even thus admonished, thus in hope and heart<br>Subdued and chastened, might be so constrained<br>To look between the thunder-bearing clouds<br>That darken over this mysterious ball s<br>Blind face, for surer, better things beyond<br>Its flying scenes of doubtful good, commixed<br>With evident evil: yea, conclude at last<br>That wereso in the universe of God<br>Our better home may be, it is not here;<br>Then here why build we? </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>O! Then, farewell,<br>Fancy and Hope, twin angels of the past!<br>Thee, Fancy, chiefly of my younger life<br>The spiritual spouse, farewell! With all<br>Thy pictured equipage: the shapes sublime<br>Of universal liberty and right,<br>Dethroning tyrants and investing worth<br>Alone with power and honour; and with these<br>Fair visions that come shining to the heart<br>Like evening stars from a serener air<br>Of generosity, in rapture high<br>At rival excellence; of charity<br>Living in secret for her own sweet sake;<br>Of mercy lifting up a fallen foe;<br>Of pity yearning o’er the child of shame;<br>Unselfish love, and resolute friendship—all,<br>Even to common trust—farewell! These lights<br>May never burn in the grey dome of time<br>or constellate for me the world again!<br>No more! No, never more. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>The Cemetery<br> Here, only here<br>In the dark dwellings of this silent city<br>Is rest for the world-weary. Slander here,<br>Disease and poverty, forego their victim;<br>The fox of envy and the wolf of scorn<br>Snarl not within these gates. The enemy<br>Who comes to triumph o’er the powerless bones<br>That once he feared, still hates—even as he comes,<br>By the dismaying silence smitten, stops,<br>Listening for some far reproachful voice<br>Heard only through the mystery of his soul,<br>And, shuddering, asks forgiveness. Slept I here,<br>And should an enemy so plead, and might<br>My injured spirit, hovering over, hear—<br>The boon were granted. O that here, even now,<br>The sense were frozen to forgetfulness<br>That I, upon this populous star of God,<br>This earth that I was born to, and have loved,<br>Am utterly uncared-for and alone! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> Whither?<br>Alas! These thoughts are storming all my soul<br>With madness—yea, the madness of despair!<br>And though my reason lifting up its strength<br>As desperately confronts them, just as well<br>Might the poor castaway, who helpless stands<br>On some bleak rock in the mid ocean, preach<br>Obedience to the breakers surging round<br>That perilous point, as I (in this wild gloom)<br>Strive to o’ercome them—And why should I strive?<br>No, rather let them howl like midnight wolves<br>Within my failing brain, and gnaw and tug<br>At my sick heart, their bitter food, for they<br>Will help me to my one desire—death. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354856" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Be his rest who sleeps below,<br>Done to death by toil and woe,<br> Sound and sweet.<br>So much in fortune did he lack,<br> So little meet<br>Of kindness, as with bleeding feet<br>He journeyed life’s most barren track,<br>That only hate in its deceit,<br>Not love, not pity, would entreat<br> To have him back.<br>But he sleeps well where many a bloom<br>That might not grace his living home<br> Pranks the raised sod:<br>Tokening, perhaps, that one who here<br>Missed the world’s smile, hath met elsewhere<br> The smile of God.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Charles+Harpur">Charles Harpur</a></strong></div>

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