Wind-Clouds and Star-Drifts
I
Another clouded night; the stars are hid,The orb that waits my search is hid with them.Patience! Why grudge an hour, a month, a year,To plant my ladder and to gain the roundThat leads my footsteps to the heaven of fame,Where waits the wreath my sleepless midnights won?Not the stained laurel such as heroes wearThat withers when some stronger conqueror’s heelTreads down their shrivelling trophies in the dust;But the fair garland whose undying greenNot time can change, nor wrath of gods or men!
With quickened heart-beats I shall hear the tonguesThat speak my praise; but better far the senseThat in the unshaped ages, buried deepIn the dark mines of unaccomplished timeYet to be stamped with morning’s royal dieAnd coined in golden days,—in those dim yearsI shall be reckoned with the undying dead,My name emblazoned on the fiery arch,Unfading till the stars themselves shall fade.Then, as they call the roll of shining worlds,Sages of race unborn in accents newShall count me with the Olympian ones of old,Whose glories kindle through the midnight skyHere glows the God of Battles; this recallsThe Lord of Ocean, and yon far-off sphereThe Sire of Him who gave his ancient nameTo the dim planet with the wondrous rings;Here flames the Queen of Beauty’s silver lamp,And there the moon-girt orb of mighty Jove;But this, unseen through all earth’s aeons past,A youth who watched beneath the western starSought in the darkness, found, and showed to men;Linked with his name thenceforth and evermore!So shall that name be syllabled anewIn all the tongues of all the tribes of men:I that have been through immemorial yearsDust in the dust of my forgotten timeShall live in accents shaped of blood-warm breath,Yea, rise in mortal semblance, newly bornIn shining stone, in undecaying bronze,And stand on high, and look serenely downOn the new race that calls the earth its own.
Is this a cloud, that, blown athwart my soul,Wears a false seeming of the pearly stainWhere worlds beyond the world their mingling raysBlend in soft white,—a cloud that, born of earth,Would cheat the soul that looks for light from heaven?Must every coral-insect leave his signOn each poor grain he lent to build the reef,As Babel’s builders stamped their sunburnt clay,Or deem his patient service all in vain?What if another sit beneath the shadeOf the broad elm I planted by the way,—What if another heed the beacon lightI set upon the rock that wrecked my keel,Have I not done my task and served my kind?Nay, rather act thy part, unnamed, unknown,And let Fame blow her trumpet through the worldWith noisy wind to swell a fool’s renown,Joined with some truth be stumbled blindly o’er,Or coupled with some single shining deedThat in the great account of all his daysWill stand alone upon the bankrupt sheetHis pitying angel shows the clerk of Heaven.The noblest service comes from nameless hands,And the best servant does his work unseen.Who found the seeds of fire and made them shoot,Fed by his breath, in buds and flowers of flame?Who forged in roaring flames the ponderous stone,And shaped the moulded metal to his need?Who gave the dragging car its rolling wheel,And tamed the steed that whirls its circling round?All these have left their work and not their names,Why should I murmur at a fate like theirs?This is the heavenly light; the pearly stainWas but a wind-cloud drifting oer the stars!