The Song of the Spirit of the Hour

Spirit of the Hour

Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled

The abysses of the sky and the wide earth,

There was a change; the impalpable thin air

And the all-circling sunlight were transformed,

As if the sense of love, dissolved in them,

Had folded itself round the spher'd world.

My vision then grew clear, and I could see

Into the mysteries of the universe.

Dizzy as with delight I floated down;

Winnowing the lightsome air with languid plumes,

My coursers sought their birthplace in the sun,

Where they henceforth will live exempt from toil,

Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire,

And where my moonlike car will stand within

A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms

Of thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and me,

And you, fair nymphs, looking the love we feel,--

In memory of the tidings it has borne,--

Beneath a dome fretted with graven flowers,

Poised on twelve columns of resplendent stone,

And open to the bright and liquid sky.

Yoked to it by an amphisbænic snake

The likeness of those winged steeds will mock

The flight from which they find repose. Alas,

Whither has wandered now my partial tongue

When all remains untold which ye would hear?

As I have said, I floated to the earth;

It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss

To move, to breathe, to be. I wandering went

Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind,

And first was disappointed not to see

Such mighty change as I had felt within

Expressed in outward things; but soon I looked,

And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked

One with the other even as spirits do--

None fawned, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear,

Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows

No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell,

'All hope abandon, ye who enter here.'

None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear

Gazed on another's eye of cold command,

Until the subject of a tyrant's will

Became, worse fate, the abject of his own,

Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death.

None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines

Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak.

None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart

The sparks of love and hope till there remained

Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed,

And the wretch crept a vampire among men,

Infecting all with his own hideous ill.

None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk

Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes,

Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy

With such a self-mistrust as has no name.

And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind,

As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew

On the wide earth, passed; gentle, radiant forms,

From custom's evil taint exempt and pure;

Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,

Looking emotions once they feared to feel,

And changed to all which once they dared not be,

Yet being now, made earth like heaven; nor pride,

Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame,

The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall,

Spoiled the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love.

Thrones, altars, judgment-seats, and prisons, wherein,

And beside which, by wretched men were borne

Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes

Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance,

Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes,

The ghosts of a no-more-remembered fame

Which from their unworn obelisks, look forth

In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs

Of those who were their conquerors; mouldering round,

Those imaged to the pride of kings and priests

A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide

As is the world it wasted, and are now

But an astonishment; even so the tools

And emblems of its last captivity,

Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth,

Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded now.

And those foul shapes,--abhorred by god and man,

Which, under many a name and many a form

Strange, savage, ghastly, dark, and execrable,

Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world,

And which the nations, panic-stricken, served

With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love

Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandless,

And slain among men's unreclaiming tears,

Flattering the thing they feared, which fear was hate,--

Frown, mouldering fast, o'er their abandoned shrines.

The painted veil, by those who were, called life,

Which mimicked, as with colors idly spread,

All men believed and hoped, is torn aside;

The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains

Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man

Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,

Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king

Over himself; just, gentle, wise; but man

Passionless--no, yet free from guilt or pain,

Which were, for his will made or suffered them;

Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves,

From chance, and death, and mutability,

The clogs of that which else might oversoar

The loftiest star of unascended heaven,

Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.