Wind-clouds and star-drifts.

VI

     The time is racked with birth-pangs; every hour
     Brings forth some gasping truth, and truth new-born
     Looks a misshapen and untimely growth,
     The terror of the household and its shame,
     A monster coiling in its nurse’s lap
     That some would strangle, some would only starve;
     But still it breathes, and passed from hand to hand,
     And suckled at a hundred half-clad breasts,
     Comes slowly to its stature and its form,
     Calms the rough ridges of its dragon-scales,
     Changes to shining locks its snaky hair,
     And moves transfigured into angel guise,
     Welcomed by all that cursed its hour of birth,
     And folded in the same encircling arms
     That cast it like a serpent from their hold!

     If thou wouldst live in honor, die in peace,
     Have the fine words the marble-workers learn
     To carve so well, upon thy funeral-stone,
     And earn a fair obituary, dressed
     In all the many-colored robes of praise,
     Be deafer than the adder to the cry
     Of that same foundling truth, until it grows
     To seemly favor, and at length has won
     The smiles of hard-mouthed men and light-upped dames,
     Then snatch it from its meagre nurse’s breast,
     Fold it in silk and give it food from gold;
     So shalt thou share its glory when at last
     It drops its mortal vesture, and revealed
     In all the splendor of its heavenly form,
     Spreads on the startled air its mighty wings!

     Alas! how much that seemed immortal truth
     That heroes fought for, martyrs died to save,
     Reveals its earth-born lineage, growing old
     And limping in its march, its wings unplumed,
     Its heavenly semblance faded like a dream!

     Here in this painted casket, just unsealed,
     Lies what was once a breathing shape like thine,
     Once loved as thou art loved; there beamed the eyes
     That looked on Memphis in its hour of pride,
     That saw the walls of hundred-gated Thebes,
     And all the mirrored glories of the Nile. 
     See how they toiled that all-consuming time
     Might leave the frame immortal in its tomb;
     Filled it with fragrant balms and odorous gums
     That still diffuse their sweetness through the air,
     And wound and wound with patient fold on fold
     The flaxen bands thy hand has rudely torn! 
     Perchance thou yet canst see the faded stain
     Of the sad mourner’s tear.

                              But what is this? 
     The sacred beetle, bound upon the breast
     Of the blind heathen!  Snatch the curious prize,
     Give it a place among thy treasured spoils
     Fossil and relic,—­corals, encrinites,
     The fly in amber and the fish in stone,
     The twisted circlet of Etruscan gold,
     Medal, intaglio, poniard, poison-ring,
    —­Place for the Memphian beetle with thine hoard!