THE SPHINX

The Sphinx is drowsy,
  Her wings are furled: 
Her ear is heavy,
  She broods on the world. 
“Who’ll tell me my secret,
  The ages have kept?—­
I awaited the seer
  While they slumbered and slept:—­

“The fate of the man-child,
  The meaning of man;
Known fruit of the unknown;
  Daedalian plan;
Out of sleeping a waking,
  Out of waking a sleep;
Life death overtaking;
  Deep underneath deep?

“Erect as a sunbeam,
  Upspringeth the palm;
The elephant browses,
  Undaunted and calm;
In beautiful motion
  The thrush plies his wings;
Kind leaves of his covert,
  Your silence he sings.

“The waves, unashamed,
  In difference sweet,
Play glad with the breezes,
  Old playfellows meet;
The journeying atoms,
  Primordial wholes,
Firmly draw, firmly drive,
  By their animate poles.

“Sea, earth, air, sound, silence. 
  Plant, quadruped, bird,
By one music enchanted,
  One deity stirred,—­
Each the other adorning,
  Accompany still;
Night veileth the morning,
  The vapor the hill.

“The babe by its mother
  Lies bathed in joy;
Glide its hours uncounted,—­
  The sun is its toy;
Shines the peace of all being,
  Without cloud, in its eyes;
And the sum of the world
  In soft miniature lies.

“But man crouches and blushes,
  Absconds and conceals;
He creepeth and peepeth,
  He palters and steals;
Infirm, melancholy,
  Jealous glancing around,
An oaf, an accomplice,
  He poisons the ground.

“Out spoke the great mother,
  Beholding his fear;—­
At the sound of her accents
  Cold shuddered the sphere:—­
’Who has drugged my boy’s cup? 
  Who has mixed my boy’s bread? 
Who, with sadness and madness,
  Has turned my child’s head?’”

I heard a poet answer
  Aloud and cheerfully,
’Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges
  Are pleasant songs to me. 
Deep love lieth under
  These pictures of time;
They fade in the light of
  Their meaning sublime.

“The fiend that man harries
  Is love of the Best;
Yawns the pit of the Dragon,
  Lit by rays from the Blest. 
The Lethe of Nature
  Can’t trance him again,
Whose soul sees the perfect,
  Which his eyes seek in vain.

“To vision profounder,
  Man’s spirit must dive;
His aye-rolling orb
  At no goal will arrive;
The heavens that now draw him
  With sweetness untold,
Once found,—­for new heavens
  He spurneth the old.

“Pride ruined the angels,
  Their shame them restores;
Lurks the joy that is sweetest
  In stings of remorse. 
Have I a lover
  Who is noble and free?—­
I would he were nobler
  Than to love me.