Beauty—a living Presence of the earth— Surpassing the most fair ideal Forms Which craft of delicate spirits hath composed From earth’s materials—waits upon his steps; Pitches her tents before him as he moves, An hourly neighbor.
But though these poems are essentially meditative in spirit, they are continually verging on two forms of the highest poetic expression, abstract imagination and ecstasy; and the clear, serene, intense vision which is their ordinary characteristic, is the appropriate mood out of which such forms of imagination naturally proceed. Let us first give a specimen of the creativeness of his imagination in its calmly contemplative mood, and we will select one of his many hundred sonnets.
Tranquillity! the sovereign aim wert thou In heathen schools of philosophic lore; Heart-stricken by stern destiny of yore The Tragic Muse thee served with thoughtful vow; And what of hope Elysium could allow Was fondly seized by Sculpture to restore Peace to the Mourner. _But when He who wore_ _The crown of thorns around his bleeding brow_ _Warmed our sad being with celestial light,_ Then Arts, which still had drawn a softening grace From shadowy fountains of the Infinite, Communed with that Idea face to face: And move around it now as planets run, Each in its orbit round the central sun.
We will not stop to comment on the wealth of thought contained in this sonnet, or the lingering suggestiveness of that wonderful line—
“Warmed our _sad_ being with celestial light,”
but proceed to give another example, fragrant with the deepest spirit of meditation:
More sweet than odors caught by him who sails Near spicy shores of Araby the blest, A thousand times more exquisitely sweet, The freight of holy feeling which we meet In thoughtful moments, wafted by the gales From fields where good men walk, and bowers wherein they rest.
The following sonnet may be commended to warriors and statesmen, as containing a wisdom as practical in its application as it is lofty in its conception:
I grieved for Bonaparté with a vain And an unthinking grief! The tenderest mood Of that man’s mind—what can it be? What food Fed his first hopes? What knowledge could _he_ gain? ’Tis not in battles that from youth we train The Governor who must be wise and good, And temper with the sternness of the brain Thoughts motherly and meek as womanhood. Wisdom doth live with children round her knees; Books, leisure, perfect freedom, and the talk Man holds with week-day man in the hourly walk Of the mind’s business; these are the degrees By which true sway doth mount; this is the stalk True Power doth grow on; and her rights are these.