About his paths the tall swift angels are, Whose motion is like music but more sweet; The centuries for him their gates unbar; He hears the stars their _Glorias_ repeat; And in high moments when the fervid soul Burns white with love, lo! on his gaze replete The Vision of the Godhead shall unroll--
Trine within trine, inextricably One, Distinct, innumerable, inseparate, And never ending what was ne'er begun, Within Himself his Freedom and his Fate, All dreams, all harmonies, all Forms of light In his Infinity intrinsecate-- Until the soul no more can bear the sight.
O secret taciturn disdainful Death! Knowing all this, why hast thou held thy peace? Master of Silence, thou wilt waste no breath On weaklings, nor to stiffen nerveless knees Deny strong men the conquest of one qualm-- And they, thy dauntless comrades, are at ease, And need no speech, and greet thee calm for calm.
Cast them adrift in wastes of ageless Night, Or bid them follow into Hell, they dare; So are they worthy of their thrones of light. O that great tranquil rapture they shall share! That life compact of adamantine fire! My soul goes out across the eastern air To that far country with a wild desire!...
But still the marshes haunt me; still my thought Returns upon their silence, there to brood Till the significance of earth is brought Back to my heart, and in a sturdier mood I turn my eyes toward the distance dim, And in the purple far infinitude Watch the white ships sink under the sea-rim;
Some bound for Flemish ports or Genovese, Some for Bermuda bound, or Baltimore; Others, perchance, for further Orient seas, Sumatra and the straits of Singapore, Or antique cities of remote Cathay, Or past Gibraltar and the Libyan shore, Through Bab-el-mandeb eastward to Bombay;
And one shall signal flaming Teneriffe, And the Great Captive's ocean-prison speak, Then on beyond the demon-haunted cliff, By Madagascar's palms and Mozambique, Till in some sudden tropic dawn afar The Sultan sees the colors at her peak Salute the minarets of Zanzibar.
The subject of this elegy was born at Boston in 1819, and educated at the Boston Latin School. While yet a young man he visited England and Italy, with which latter country and its literature his life was to be so largely occupied. From early youth he was a devoted student of Dante, to the translation of whose "Divine Comedy" he chiefly applied his scholarship and poetic genius. In 1854 he published a volume of original poems, among which were the famous verses, "On a Bust of Dante," which found their way at once into all the anthologies. Several other volumes were privately printed, and in 1892 he published "Circum Præcordia," which contained, besides a versification of the collects of the Church as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer, about a dozen original poems of a religious nature. The translation of the first ten cantos of the "Inferno" was published in 1843, and the complete "Inferno" in 1867. The opening cantos of the "Purgatorio" were issued in 1876, and the remaining cantos were afterward completed and are now in process of publication. In 1870 Mr. Parsons was made a Corresponding Fellow of the Reale Accademia de' Fisiocritici in Siena. He died at Scituate, Mass., September 3, 1892.