  If, in the silent mind of One all-pure, At first imagined lay The sacred world; and by procession sure From those still deeps, in form and colour drest, Seasons alternating, and night and day, The long-mused thought to north, south, east, and west, Took then its all-seen way; O waking on a world which thus-wise springs! Whether it needs thee count Betwixt thy waking and the birth of things Ages or hours—O waking on life's stream! By lonely pureness to the all-pure fount (Only by this thou canst) the colour'd dream Of life remount! Thin, thin the pleasant human noises grow, And faint the city gleams; Rare the lone pastoral huts—marvel not thou! The solemn peaks but to the stars are known, But to the stars, and the cold lunar beams; Alone the sun arises, and alone Spring the great streams. But, if the wild unfather'd mass no birth In divine seats hath known; Rocking her obscure body to and fro, Ceases not from all time to heave and groan, Unfruitful oft, and at her happiest throe Forms, what she forms, alone; O seeming sole to awake, thy sun-bathed head Piercing the solemn cloud Round thy still dreaming brother-world outspread! O man, whom Earth, thy long-vext mother, bare Not without joy—so radiant, so endow'd (Such happy issue crown'd her painful care)— Be not too proud! Oh when most self-exalted most alone, Chief dreamer, own thy dream! Thy brother-world stirs at thy feet unknown, Who hath a monarch's hath no brother's part; Yet doth thine inmost soul with yearning teem. —Oh, what a spasm shakes the dreamer's heart! "I, too, but seem." |
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