I, whose best prayer is silence; sitting dumb In the great temple where I nightly serve Him who is throned in light, have dared to claim The poet's franchise, though I may not hope To wear his garland; hear me while I tell My story in such form as poets use, But breathed in fitful whispers, as the wind Sighs and then slumbers, wakes and sighs again.
Thou Vision, floating in the breathless air Between me and the fairest of the stars, I tell my lonely thoughts as unto thee.
Look not for marvels of the scholar's pen In my rude measure; I can only show A slender-margined, unillumined page, And trust its meaning to the flattering eye That reads it in the gracious light of love.
Ah, wouldst thou clothe thyself in breathing shape And nestle at my side, my voice should lend Whate'er my verse may lack of tender rhythm To make thee listen.
I have stood entranced When, with her fingers wandering o'er the keys, The white enchantress with the golden hair Breathed all her soul through some unvalued rhyme;Some flower of song that long had lost its bloom;Lo! its dead summer kindled as she sang!
The sweet contralto, like the ringdove's coo, Thrilled it with brooding, fond, caressing tones, And the pale minstrel's passion lived again, Tearful and trembling as a dewy rose The wind has shaken till it fills the air With light and fragrance.Such the wondrous charm A song can borrow when the bosom throbs That lends it breath.
So from the poet's lips His verse sounds doubly sweet, for none like him Feels every cadence of its wave-like flow;He lives the passion over, while he reads, That shook him as he sang his lofty strain, And pours his life through each resounding line, As ocean, when the stormy winds are hushed, Still rolls and thunders through his billowy caves.
Let me retrace the record of the years That made me what I am.A man most wise, But overworn with toil and bent with age, Sought me to be his scholar,--me, run wild >From books and teachers,--kindled in my soul The love of knowledge; led me to his tower, Showed me the wonders of the midnight realm His hollow sceptre ruled, or seemed to rule, Taught me the mighty secrets of the spheres, Trained me to find the glimmering specks of light Beyond the unaided sense, and on my chart To string them one by one, in order due, As on a rosary a saint his beads.
I was his only scholar; I became The echo to his thought; whate'er he knew Was mine for asking; so from year to year We wrought together, till there came a time When I, the learner, was the master half Of the twinned being in the dome-crowned tower.
Minds roll in paths like planets; they revolve This in a larger, that a narrower ring, But round they come at last to that same phase, That self-same light and shade they showed before.
I learned his annual and his monthly tale, His weekly axiom and his daily phrase, I felt them coming in the laden air, And watched them laboring up to vocal breath, Even as the first-born at his father's board Knows ere he speaks the too familiar jest Is on its way, by some mysterious sign Forewarned, the click before the striking bell.
He shrivelled as I spread my growing leaves, Till trust and reverence changed to pitying care;He lived for me in what he once had been, But I for him, a shadow, a defence, The guardian of his fame, his guide, his staff, Leaned on so long he fell if left alone.
I was his eye, his ear, his cunning hand, Love was my spur and longing after fame, But his the goading thorn of sleepless age That sees its shortening span, its lengthening shades, That clutches what it may with eager grasp, And drops at last with empty, outstretched hands.
All this he dreamed not.He would sit him down Thinking to work his problems as of old, And find the star he thought so plain a blur, The columned figures labyrinthine wilds Without my comment, blind and senseless scrawls That vexed him with their riddles; he would strive And struggle for a while, and then his eye Would lose its light, and over all his mind The cold gray mist would settle; and erelong The darkness fell, and I was left alone.
