Away, ye muses, all away!
Away with songs of finch and fay.
Away the jaundiced sight
That magnifies the firefly’s light
To bonfire bright;
That sets ablaze at once
My musing’s dimly burning lamps;
That ornaments with rhymes
The penury-stricken looks betimes;
That over-clothes the logic – lord
With fancy –swollen words.
Away, the partial love
That ‘boldens Nature to sit above
Her Maker!
This day I fasten eyelid doors,
With absence wax my ears,
With languorous peace congeal
My tongue, my touch, my tears *
That I within may pore
Upon the things behind, ahead,
In the darkness round me spread.
I lock Dame Nature out
With all her fickle rout.
Somewhere here,
In the darkness drear,
I myself with cheer
My course will steer
In the path
E’er sought by all:
Its magnet call
I hear.
Not hear, not here,
Apollo would his burning chariot steer;
Nor Diana dare to peep
Into the sacred silence deep.
Not here, not here,
Not far or near
Can mounts or rebel waves
E’er make me full of fear;
Nor evermore
Their dreadful grandeur to adore.
Not here, not here
The soft capricious wiles of flowers;
Nor swarming storm clouds’ sweeping terror,
Dishevelling the trees
And light-haired skies;
Nor doomsday’s thunderous roar,
Dismantling earth and stars-
The cosmic beauties all to mar –
Not Nature’s murderous mutiny,
Nor man’s exploding destiny
Can touch me here.
Not here, not here:
Through mind’s strong iron bars,
Not gods or goblins, men or nature,
Without my pass dare enter.
I look behind, ahead –
On naught but darkness tread.
In wrath I strike, and set the dark ablaze
With the immortal spark of thought,
By friction-process brought
Of concentration
And distraction.
The darkness burns
With a million tongues;
And now I spy
All past, all distant things, as nigh.
I smile serene
As I expose to gaze.
In wisdom’s brilliant blaze,
All charms of the Hidden Home Unseen:
The Home of Nature’s birth,
The planets’ moulding hearth,
The factory whence all forms or fairies start,
The bards, colossal minds, and hearts,
The gods and all,
And all, and all!
Away, away
With all the lightsome lays!
Oh, now will I portray
In humble way,
And try to lisp, if only in half truths,
Of wordless charms of Thee Unseen,
To whom Dame Nature owes her nature
and her sheen.