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"IN YOUTH I HAVE KNOWN ONE"
How often we forget all time, when lone
Admiring Nature`s universal throne;
Her woods--her wilds--her mountains-the intense
Reply of Hers to Our intelligence! I I IN youth I have known one with whom the Earth
In secret communing held-as he with it,
In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:
Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit
From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth
A passionate light such for his spirit was fit
And yet that spirit knew-not in the hour
Of its own fervor-what had o`er it power. II Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought
To a fever* by the moonbeam that hangs o`er,
But I will half believe that wild light fraught
With more of sovereignty than ancient lore
Hath ever told-or is it of a thought
The unembodied essence, and no more
That with a quickening spell doth o`er us pass
As dew of the night-time, o`er the summer grass? III Doth o`er us pass, when, as th` expanding eye
To the loved object-so the tear to the lid
Will start, which lately slept in apathy?
And yet it need not be---(that object) hid
From us in life-but common-which doth lie
Each hour before us--but then only bid
With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken
T` awake us--`Tis a symbol and a token IV Of what in other worlds shall be--and given
In beauty by our God, to those alone
Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven
Drawn by their heart`s passion, and that tone,
That high tone of the spirit which hath striven
Though not with Faith-with godliness--whose throne
With desperate energy `t hath beaten down;
Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.
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