To him Philemon:  ’I’ll not balk
  Thy will with any shackle;
Wilt add a harden to thy walk? 
There! take her without further talk: 
  You’re both but fit to cackle!’ 90

But scarce the poet touched the bird,
  It swelled to stature regal;
And when her cloud-wide wings she stirred,
A whisper as of doom was heard,
  ’Twas Jove’s bolt-bearing eagle.

As when from far-off cloud-bergs springs
  A crag, and, hurtling under,
From cliff to cliff the rumor flings,
So she from flight-foreboding wings
  Shook out a murmurous thunder. 100

She gripped the poet to her breast,
  And ever, upward soaring,
Earth seemed a new moon in the west,
And then one light among the rest
  Where squadrons lie at mooring.

How tell to what heaven-hallowed seat
  The eagle bent his courses? 
The waves that on its bases beat,
The gales that round it weave and fleet,
  Are life’s creative forces. 110

Here was the bird’s primeval nest,
  High on a promontory
Star-pharosed, where she takes her rest
To brood new aeons ’neath her breast,
  The future’s unfledged glory.

I know not how, but I was there
  All feeling, hearing, seeing;
It was not wind that stirred my hair
But living breath, the essence rare
  Of unembodied being. 120

And in the nest an egg of gold
  Lay soft in self-made lustre,
Gazing whereon, what depths untold
Within, what marvels manifold,
  Seemed silently to muster!

Daily such splendors to confront
  Is still to me and you sent? 
It glowed as when Saint Peter’s front,
Illumed, forgets its stony wont,
  And seems to throb translucent. 130

One saw therein the life of man,
  (Or so the poet found it,)
The yolk and white, conceive who can,
Were the glad earth, that, floating, span
  In the glad heaven around it.

I knew this as one knows in dream,
  Where no effects to causes
Are chained as in our work-day scheme,
And then was wakened by a scream
  That seemed to come from Baucis. 140

‘Bless Zeus!’ she cried, ‘I’m safe below!’
  First pale, then red as coral;
And I, still drowsy, pondered slow,
And seemed to find, but hardly know,
  Something like this for moral.

Each day the world is born anew
  For him who takes it rightly;
Not fresher that which Adam knew,
Not sweeter that whose moonlit dew
  Entranced Arcadia nightly. 150

Rightly?  That’s simply:  ’tis to see
  Some substance casts these shadows
Which we call Life and History,
That aimless seem to chase and flee
  Like wind-gleams over meadows.

Simply?  That’s nobly:  ’tis to know
  That God may still be met with,
Nor groweth old, nor doth bestow
These senses fine, this brain aglow,
  To grovel and forget with. 160