But scarce the poet touched the bird, It rose to stature regal; And when her cloud-wide wings she stirred, A whisper as of doom was heard,-- 'T was Jove's bolt-bearing eagle.
As when from far-off cloudbergs springs A crag, and, hurtling under, From cliff to cliff the rumor flings, So she from flight-foreboding wings Shook out a murmurous thunder.
She gripped the poet to her breast, And ever upward soaring, Earth seemed a new-moon in the West, And then one light among the rest Where squadrons lie at mooring.
How know I to what o'er-world seat The eagle bent her courses? The waves that seem its base to beat, The gales that round it weave and fleet, Are life's creative forces.
Here was the bird's primeval nest, High on a promontory Star-pharosed, where she takes her rest, And broods new æons 'neath her breast, The future's unfledged glory.
I knew not how, but I was there, All feeling, hearing, seeing; It was not wind that stirred my hair, But living breath, the essence rare Of unembodied being.
And in the nest an egg of gold Lay wrapt in its own lustre, Gazing whereon, what depths untold Within, what wonders manifold Seemed silently to muster!
Do visions of such inward grace Still haunt our life benighted? It glowed as when St. Peter's face, Illumed, forgets its stony race, And seems to throb self-lighted.
One saw therein the life of man,-- Or so the poet found it; The yolk and white, conceive who can, Were the glad earth, that, floating, span In the soft heaven around it.
I knew this as one knows in dream, Where no effects to causes Are chained as in our work-day scheme, And then was wakened by a scream Sent up by frightened Baucis.
"Bless Zeus!" she cried, "I'm safe below!" First pale, then red as coral; And I, still drowsy, pondered slow, And seemed to find, but hardly know, Something like this for moral.
Each day the world is born anew For him who takes it rightly; Not fresher that which Adam knew, Not sweeter that whose moonlit dew Dropped on Arcadia nightly.
Rightly?--that's simply: 't is to see _Some_ substance casts these shadows Which we call Life and History, That aimless seem to chase and flee Like wind-gleams over meadows.
Simply?--that's nobly: 't is to know That God may still be met with, Nor groweth old, nor doth bestow This sense, this heart, this brain aglow, To grovel and forget with.