The Immortality of Genius

Language provides poor symbols of expression
When roused Imagination, holding rein,
Sends airy forms of grace in vast procession
Across the poet's brain.
An Orphic tongue would be too weak an agent
To tell the tale of inspiration's hour;
To paint an outline of the gorgeous pageant,
A Titian have no power.
The meagre written record of the closet
Saves but a few, pale glimmering pearls — no more
When the lashed waves roll inland to deposit
Their wealth along the shore
The queen of Beauty and her blushing daughters
In Crathis bathed — that old poetic stream —
And each dark ringlet from the sparkling waters
Imbibed an' amber gleam.
Thus thoughts that send and will send on forever,
From the dim plains of long ago, a light,
Caught from Imagination's golden river
Their glow divinely bright.
When done with life, its fever, din, and jostle,
How scant and poor a portion after all
Of Nature's priest, and Art's renowned apostle
Lies hid beneath the pall.
Though grazing herd and hosts with clanging sabres
Their graves forgotten trample rudely o'er,
To tribes and nations, through their crowning labors,
They speak for evermore.
Oh, Genius! dowered with privilege immortal,
Thus from the wastes of time to stretch thy hand,
And, with a touch unfold the glittering portal
Of an enchanted land!
Death knows thee not,tho' long ago were blended
Thy visible forms with undistinguished clay;
The dead are they whose mission here is ended —
Thy voice is heard to-day.
Heard on the honeyed lip of Juliet melting —
In dreaming Richard's cry of guilty fear —
In shouts that rise above the night-storm pelting
From old distracted Leak,:
Heard in the organ-swell of Milton pealing —
In Gray's elegaic sorrow for the past —
In flute-notes from the muse of Spenser stealing,
In Dryden's bugle's blast:
Heard in the matchless works of thy creation,
Spreaking from canvas, scroll, and marble lips,
In those deep awful tones of inspiration
That baffle death's eclipse.