And thus the man grew,
And thus did a few
Find, thoughtfully plann’d for the wants they divined,
His work that is now the pride of his kind.
Who prized it at first?—
Ah, those little verst
In the codes that are current turn first from them all
To the herald that comes to trump a new call.
Those nearest their youth
Live nearest the breasts that glow with the truth,
And welcome it gratefully warm from the heart.
Earth’s elders and sages,
Far off from the place where the springs all start,
Scarce ever can prize
A stream that supplies
A draft less far from its font than their age is.
No deeds can course from as grand a source
As the life of which they in their youth form’d a part.
Naught sparkles as bright
To them as the light
Of an old, cold, frozen, and crystallized art.
But, ah, if you ask them what was true
When the words or the ways of their art were new,
If you ask them what were the traits it would show
Ere the form now frozen no longer could flow,
Or how it differ’d in nature from those
That spring in the present, when first it rose,—
All this their critic cares not to know.
He is nothing if not the dog of his day,
Who barks or who licks
As his master, the world, may make him obey
By throwing him bones or swinging him kicks.
Pray, what can he know till all the world know it!
If currents in view
Are to crystallize too
Like things of the past, the winter will show it.
The future must rate
The fruit of the present: so shrewd men wait,
And but of the dead
Are their eulogies read.—
Good souls, they never will let one rest
Until he is borne to the land of the blest!
No heart is aglow
With the burning zeal of a holiest mission,
But makes them fearful of heat below,
And tremble in dread of a fiend’s apparition.
For Satan has toils that, no matter whether
Come evil or good, trap all men together.
Whenever one spies
Light coming, he cries,
“’Tis naught but a will-o-the-wisp to the wise.”
Half trust him, and half, not duped by his lies,
Begin to dispute them; and then, at the quarrel,
The seer of the light has thorns for his laurel.
Ay, rare, indeed, in that day is his fate,
If the eye of the prophet—so noble a trait—
Escape from censure and gibe and hate.
For an eye like his will a goal pursue
So far in advance of his time and its view,
That only the march of an age, forsooth,
Can o’ertake the vision he sees in his youth.
But, oh! in that age, when it comes, the earth
Will live in his light and know of his worth.
And many and many will be the men
Who move on then,
And about them find
The scenes that he in his day divined,
Who, sure of his presence, will know he is nigh,
And feel he is leading, and never can die.
This man of the monument lived like that.
Men cheer him now; but of old they sat
In judgment against him; while, far away
From the place where they had chosen to stay,
He push’d for the light; and grew old and hoar
Ere one whom he knew had begun to explore,
Or seek what he sought. Alone in the van,
He had fail’d of aid had he thought it in man.