With favouring winds, o’er sunlit seas,
We sailed for the Hesperides,
The land where golden apples grow;
But that, ah! that was long ago.
How far since then the ocean streams
Have swept us from the land of dreams.
That land of fiction and of truth,
The lost Atlantis of our youth!
Whither, ah, whither? Are not these
The tempest-haunted Hebrides,
Where sea-gulls scream, and breakers roar,
And wreck and sea-weed line the shore?
Ultima Thule! Utmost Isle!
Here in thy harbours for awhile
We lower our sails; awhile we rest
From the unending, endless quest.
HERMES TRISMEGISTUS.
As Seleucus narrates, Hermes described the principles that rank as
wholes in two myriads of books; or, as we are informed by Manetho, he
perfectly unfolded these principles in three myriads six thousand five
hundred and twenty five Volumes.
Our ancestors dedicated the inventions of their wisdom to this deity,
inscribing all their own writings with the name of Hermes.—IAMBLICUS.
Still through Egypt’s desert places
Flows the lordly Nile;
From its banks the great stone faces,
Gaze with patient smile;
Still the pyramids imperious
Pierce the cloudless skies,
And the Sphinx stares with mysterious,
Solemn, stony eyes.
But where are the old Egyptian
Demigods and kings?
Nothing left but an inscription
Graven on stones and rings.
Where are Helius and Hephoestus,
Gods of eldest eld?
Where is Hermes Trismegistus,
Who their secrets held?
Where are now the many hundred
Thousand books he wrote?
By the Thaumaturgists plundered,
Lost in lands remote;
In oblivion sunk for ever,
As when o’er the land
Blows a storm-wind, in the river
Sinks the scattered sand.
Something unsubstantial, ghostly,
Seems this Theurgist,
In deep meditation mostly
Wrapped, as in a mist.
Vague, phantasmal, and unreal,
To our thought he seems,
Walking in a world ideal,
In the land of dreams.
Was he one, or many, merging
Name and fame in one,
Like a stream, to which converging
Many streamlets run?
Till, with gathered power proceeding,
Ampler sweep it takes,
Downward the sweet waters leading
From unnumbered lakes.
By the Nile I see him wandering,
Pausing now and then,
On the mystic union pondering
Between gods and men;
Half-believing, wholly feeling,
With supreme delight,
How the gods, themselves concealing,
Lift men to their height.
Or in Thebes, the hundred-gated,
In the thoroughfare
Breathing, as if consecrated,
A diviner air;
And amid discordant noises,
In the jostling throng,
Hearing far, celestial voices
Of Olympian song.
Who shall call his dreams fallacious?
Who has searched or sought
All the unexplored and spacious
Universe of thought?
Who, in his own skill confiding,
Shall with rule and line
Mark the border-land dividing
Human and divine?
Trismegistus! three times greatest!
How thy name sublime
Has descended to this latest
Progeny of time!
Happy they whose written pages
Perish with their lives,
If amid the crumbling ages
Still their name survives!
Thine, O priest of Egypt, lately
Found I in the vast,
Weed-encumbered, sombre, stately
Graveyard of the Past;
And a presence moved before me
On that gloomy shore,
As a waft of wind, that o’er me
Breathed, and was no more.
DECORATION DAY.
Sleep, comrades, sleep and rest
On this Field of the Grounded Arms,
Where foes no more molest,
Nor sentry’s shot alarms!
Ye have slept on the ground before,
And started to your feet
At the cannon’s sudden roar,
Or the drum’s redoubling beat.
But in this camp of Death
No sound your slumber breaks;
Here is no fevered breath,
No wound that bleeds and aches.
All is repose and peace,
Untrampled lies the sod;
The shouts of battle cease,
It is the Truce of God!
Rest, comrades, rest and sleep!
The thoughts of men shall be
As sentinels to keep
Your rest from danger free.
Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours.
MAD RIVER.
IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.
TRAVELLER.
Why dost thou wildly rush and roar,
Mad River, O Mad River?
Wilt thou not pause and cease to pour
Thy hurrying, headlong waters o’er
This rocky shelf for ever?
What secret trouble stirs thy breast?
Why all this fret and flurry?
Dost thou not know that what is best
In this too restless world is rest
From over-work and worry?
THE RIVER.
What wouldst thou in these mountains seek,
O stranger from the city?
Is it, perhaps, some foolish freak
Of thine, to put the words I speak
Into a plaintive ditty?
TRAVELLER.
Yes; I would learn of thee thy song,
With all its flowing numbers,
And in a voice as fresh and strong
As thine is, sing it all day long,
And hear it in my slumbers.
THE RIVER.
A brooklet nameless and unknown
Was I at first, resembling
A little child, that all alone
Comes venturing down the stairs of stone,
Irresolute and trembling.
Later, by wayward fancies led,
For the wide world I panted;
Out of the forest dark and dread,
Across the open fields I fled,
Like one pursued and haunted!
I tossed my arms, I sang aloud,
My voice exultant blending
With thunder from the passing cloud,
The wind, the forest bent and bowed,
The rush of rain descending.
I heard the distant ocean call,
Imploring and entreating;
Drawn onward, o’er this rocky wall,
I plunged, and the loud waterfall
Made answer to the greeting.
And now, beset with many ills,
A toilsome life I follow;
Compelled to carry from the hills
These logs to the impatient mills,
Below there in the hollow.
Yet something ever cheers and charms
The rudeness of my labours;
Daily I water with these arms
The cattle of a hundred farms,
And have the birds for neighbours.
Men call me MAD, and well they may,
When, full of rage and trouble,
I burst my banks of sand and clay,
And sweep their wooden bridge away,
Like withered reeds and stubble.
Now go and write thy little rhyme
As of thine own creating.
Thou seest the day is past its prime,
I can no longer waste my time;
The mills are tired of waiting.