Go, sweetest visions, die amid my tears,
For hence, nor cheered, nor blinded, must I seek
That larger dream that cannot fade; though years
Of leaden days and leagues of by-path bleak
Must intervene, with austere sadness gray,
Fade dimmer! lest in agony I turn,
And heartsick seek ye, though the Fates shriek “Nay!”
And the wroth heavens with judgment lightnings burn.

Go useless lesser dreams.  And where they were,
Rise, grave aerial Good!  Thy texture’s true. 
There is no good can die.  “No ill,” says Time, “can bear,
However beautiful, my long, long earnest view.”

SEARCHINGS.

(Early lines.)

Soul, thou hast lived before.  Thy wing
  Hath swept the ancient folds of light
Which once wrapt stilly everything,
  Before the advent of a Night.

O thou art blind and thou art dead
  Unto the knowledge that was thine. 
A longing and a dreamy dread
  Alone oft shadow the divine.

Full loud calls past eternity,
  But Lethe’s murmur stills its roar,
The one vague truth that reaches thee
  Is this—­that thou hast lived before.

Home often comes some voice of eld
  Confused and low—­a broken surge
By fate and distance half withheld—­
  Rich in linked sadness like a dirge.

The muffled, great bell Silence clangs
  His solemn call, and thou, O soul! 
Dost stir in sense’s torpid fangs,
  Like the blind magnet, toward a pole.

The deep, vast, swelling organ-sound;
  The cadence of an evening flute,
Bring oft those ancient joys around
  To linger till the notes are mute.

And when thy hushed breathing fills
  The shrine of quiet reverence,
Then, too, a freeing angel stills
  The clanking of the chains of sense.

But nearest to that former life
  Another power calleth thee,
Away from care, away from strife,
  Toward what thou wast—­infinity.

And in thee, soul, the deepest chord
  Thrills to a strain rung from above;
That strain is bound within a word,
  A sole, sweet word, and it is—­Love.

Love—­yet it cannot set thee free
  To sweep again those folds of light,
It torches but a part to thee
  And dim, though fair.  The rest is night.

As the fine structure of a man
  Fits into life’s great world, foremade,
So too it shadoweth the plan
  Of ages hidden in the shade.

And thou hast lived before; hast known
  The depth of every mystery,
Has dwelt in Nature, hid, alone
  And winged the blue aetherial sea;

Hast looked upon the ends of space;
  Hast visited each rolling star,—­
Before Time measured forth his pace,
  Scythe-armed, on a terrestrial war.

HOMER.

(Early lines.)