A wanderer is man from his birth.
He was born in a
On the breast of the river of Time;
Brimming with wonder and
He spreads out his arms to the light,
Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream.
As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been.
Whether he wakes,
Where the snowy mountainous pass,
Echoing the screams of the eagles,
Hems in its gorges the
Of the new-born clear-flowing stream;
Whether he first sees
Where the river in gleaming
Sluggishly winds through the plain;
Whether in sound of the swallowing sea—As is the world on the banks,
So is the mind of the man. Vainly does each, as he glides,
Fable and
Of the lands which the river of
Had left ere he woke on its breast,
Or shall reach when his eyes have been closed.
Only the tract where he
He wots of; only the thoughts,
Raised by the objects he passes, are his.
Who can see the green earth any
As she was by the sources of Time?
Who imagines her fields as they
In the sunshine, unworn by the plough?
Who thinks as they thought,
The tribes who then roam'd on her breast,
Her vigorous, primitive sons?
What
Now reads in her bosom as
As Rebekah read, when she
At eve by the palm-shaded well?
Who guards in her
As deep, as pellucid a
Of feeling, as tranquil, as sure? What bard,
At the height of his vision, can
Of God, of the world, of the soul,
With a plainness as near,
As flashing as Moses
When he lay in the night by his
On the starlit Arabian waste?
Can rise and
The beck of the Spirit like him?
This tract which the river of
Now flows through with us, is the plain.
Gone is the calm of its earlier shore.
Border'd by cities and
With a thousand cries is its stream.
And we on its breast, our
Are confused as the cries which we hear,
Changing and shot as the sights which we see.
And we say that repose has
For ever the course of the river of Time. That cities will crowd to its
In a blacker, incessanter line;
That the din will be more on its banks,
Denser the trade on its stream,
Flatter the plain where it flows,
Fiercer the sun overhead.
That never will those on its
See an ennobling sight,
Drink of the feeling of quiet again.
But what was before us we know not,
And we know not what shall succeed.
Haply, the river of Time—As it grows, as the towns on its
Fling their wavering
On a wider, statelier stream—May acquire, if not the
Of its early mountainous shore,
Yet a solemn peace of its own.
And the width of the waters, the
Of the grey expanse where he floats,
Freshening its current and spotted with
As it draws to the Ocean, may
Peace to the soul of the man on its breast—As the pale waste widens around him,
As the banks fade dimmer away,
As the stars come out, and the
Brings up the
Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.
