Oh, let me not die young,
  A powerless child among
  The ancient grandeurs of thy awful world! 
  I catch some fragment of the mighty song
  Which, ere to darkness hurled,
  My elder brothers in the eternal throng
  Have caught before,—­
  Faint murmurs of the surge,
  The deep, surrounding, everlasting roar
  Of a life-ocean without port or shore,—­
  Ere I depart, compelled to urge
  My fragile bark with trembling from the verge
  Of this Earth-island, into that Unknown,
  Where worlds, like souls forlorn, go wandering alone!

  Oh, let me not die young,
  With all that song unsung,
  A swift and voiceless fugitive,
  From darkness coming and in darkness lost,
  Before thy solemn Pentecost,
  Dawning within the soul, shall give
  The burning utterance of its flaming tongue,—­
  The boon whereby to other souls we live! 
  Thy worlds are flashing with immortal splendor,
  For human speech on heights of human song
  Faintly to render,
  And pour back along
  Its mountain grandeur, the accumulate rain
  Of star-light, dream-light, thoughts of joy and pain,
  Of love, hate, right and wrong,
  In floods of utterance sublime and strong,
  In dewy effluence beautiful and tender.

  The kindred darknesses
  Of caverned earth and fathomless thought,
  Of Life and Death, and their twin mysteries,
  Before and After, on my spirit press
  Tempting and awful, with high promise fraught,
  And guardian terrors, whose out-flashing swords
  Beleaguer Paradise and the holy Tree
  Sciential.  Step by step the way is fought
  That leads from Darkness, through her miscreant hordes,
  Back to the heavens of wise, and true, and free: 
  Minerva’s Gorgon, Ammon’s cyclic Asp,
  And the fierce flame-sword of the Cherubim,
  That flashed like hate across the pallid gasp
  Of exiled Eve and Adam, flare, and glare,
  And hiss venenate, round the steps of him
  Who thirsts for heavenly Wisdom, if he dare
  Climb to her bosom, or with artless grasp
  Pluck the sweet fruits that hang around him, ripe and fair.

  Oh! glorious Youth
  Is the true age of prophecy, when Truth
  Stands bared in beauty, and the young blood boils
  To hurl us in her arms, before the blur
  Of time makes dim her rounded form,
  Or the cold blood recoils
  From the polluted swarm
  Of armed Chimeras that environ her. 
  But worthy Age to ripened fruit shall bring
  The glorious blooming of its hopeful spring,
  And pile the garners of immortal Truth
  With sheaves of golden grain,
  To sow the world again,
  And fill the eager wants of the New Age’s youth.