Not that I feel that hunger after fame, Which souls of a half-greatness are beset with; But that the memory of noble deeds Cries, shame upon the idle and the vile, And keeps the heart of Man forever up To the heroic level of old time. To be forgot at first is little pain To a heart conscious of such high intent As must be deathless on the lips of men; But, having been a name, to sink and be A something which the world can do without, Which, having been or not, would never change The lightest pulse of fate,--this is indeed A cup of bitterness the worst to taste, And this thy heart shall empty to the dregs. Endless despair shall be thy Caucasus, And memory thy vulture; thou wilt find Oblivion far lonelier than this peak,-- Behold thy destiny! Thou think'st it much That I should brave thee, miserable god! But I have braved a mightier than thou, Even the tempting of this soaring heart, Which might have made me, scarcely less than thou, A god among my brethren weak and blind,-- Scarce less than thou, a pitiable thing To be down-trodden into darkness soon. But now I am above thee, for thou art The bungling workmanship of fear, the block That awes the swart Barbarian; but I Am what myself have made,--a nature wise With finding in itself the types of all,-- With watching from the dim verge of the time What things to be are visible in the gleams Thrown forward on them from the luminous past,-- Wise with the history of its own frail heart, With reverence and sorrow, and with love, Broad as the world, for freedom and for man.
Thou and all strength shall crumble, except Love, By whom and for whose glory, ye shall cease: And, when thou art but a dim moaning heard From out the pitiless glooms of Chaos, I Shall be a power and a memory, A name to fright all tyrants with, a light Unsetting as the pole-star, a great voice Heard in the breathless pauses of the fight By truth and freedom ever waged with wrong, Clear as a silver trumpet, to awake Huge echoes that from age to age live on In kindred spirits, giving them a sense Of boundless power from boundless suffering wrung: And many a glazing eye shall smile to see The memory of my triumph, (for to meet Wrong with endurance, and to overcome The present with a heart that looks beyond, Are triumph,) like a prophet eagle, perch Upon the sacred banner of the Right. Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay, Leaving it richer for the growth of truth; But Good, once put in action or in thought, Like a strong oak, doth from its boughs shed down The ripe germs of a forest. Thou; weak god, Shalt fade and be forgotten! but this soul, Fresh-living still in the serene abyss, In every heaving shall partake, that grows From heart to heart among the sons of men,-- As the ominous hum before the earthquake runs Far through the Ægean from roused isle to isle,-- Foreboding wreck to palaces and shrines, And mighty rents in many a cavernous error That darkens the free light to man:--This heart, Unscarred by thy grim vulture, as the truth Grows but more lovely 'neath the beaks and claws Of Harpies blind that fain would soil it, shall In all the throbbing exultations share That wait on freedom's triumphs, and in all The glorious agonies of martyr-spirits,-- Sharp lightning-throes to split the jagged clouds That veil the future, showing them the end,-- Pain's thorny crown for constancy and truth, Girding the temples like a wreath of stars. This is a thought, that, like a fabled laurel, Makes my faith thunder-proof; and thy dread bolts Fall on me like the silent flakes of snow On the hoar brows of aged Caucasus: But, O thought far more blissful, they can rend This cloud of flesh, and make my soul a star!