Sidney Lanier

“ This slime will suck us down—turn while thou’rt free!’ —
‘But no!’ I said, ‘Freedom bears West for me!’
Yet when the long-time stagnant winds arise,
And day by day the keel to westward flies,
My Good my people’s Ill doth come to be:
‘Ever the winds into the West do blow;
Never a ship, once turned, might homeward go;
Meanwhile we speed into the lonesome main.
For Christ’s sake, parley, Admiral! Turn, before
We sail outside all bounds of help from pain!’ —
‘Our help is in the West,’ I said once more. ”

“ Till freely repenting he whiten his spirit again;
And Friendship, in freedom, will blot out the bounding of race;
And straight Law, in freedom, will curve to the rounding of grace;
And Fashion, in freedom, will die of the lie in her face ”

“ A nothing fashioned like an All.
III.
Then breathed He softly on the dead:
“Live Self! —thou part, yet none, of Me;
Dust for humility,” He said,
“And my warm breath for Charity.
Behold my latest work, thou Earth!
The Self of Man is taking birth.”
IV.
Then, Land, tall Adam of the West,
Thou stood’st upon the springy sod,
Thy large eye ranging self-possest,
Thy limbs the limbs of God’s young god,
Thy Passion murmuring ‘I will’ —
Lord of the Lordship Good-and-Ill.
V.
O manful arms, of supple size
To clasp a world or a waist as well! ”

“ So when we heard the orchard-bird’s small song,
And all the people cried, ‘A hellish throng
To tempt us onward by the Devil planned,
Yea, all from hell—keen heron, fresh green weeds,
Pelican, tunny-fish, fair tapering reeds,
Lie-telling lands that ever shine and die
In clouds of nothing round the empty sky.
Tired Admiral, get thee from this hell, and rest!’ —
‘Steersman,’ I said, ‘hold straight into the West.’
VIII.
“I marvel how mine eye, ranging the Night,
From its big circling ever absently
Returns, thou large low Star, to fix on thee.
‘Maria!’ Star? No star: a Light, a Light! ”

“ Then that artist began in a lark’s low circling to pass;
And first he sang at the height of the top of the grass
A song of the herds that are born and die in the mass.
And next he sang a celestial-passionate round
At the height of the lips of a woman above the ground,
How ‘Love was a fair true Lady, and Death a wild hound,
And she called, and he licked her hand and with girdle was bound.’
And then with a universe-love he was hot in the wings,
And the sun stretched beams to the worlds as the shining strings
Of the large hid harp that sounds when an all-lover sings ”

“ But one o’clock and yet ‘tis Dawn!
Quick, rub thine eyes and draw thy hose:
The Morning comes ere darkness goes.
Have forth and call the yeomen out,
For somewhere, somewhere close about
Full soon a Thing must come to be
Thine honest eyes shall stare to see—
Full soon before thy patriot eyes
Freedom from out of a Wound shall rise.
Then haste ye, Prescott and Revere!
Bring all the men of Lincoln here ”

“ Man longs to be:
Oh, shall the sea-bird’s aimless wing
Alone move free?
‘Santa Maria’, well thou tremblest down the wave,
Thy ‘Pinta’ far abow, thy ‘Nina’ nigh astern:
Columbus stands in the night alone, and, passing grave,
Yearns o’er the sea as tones o’er under-silence yearn.
Heartens his heart as friend befriends his friend less brave,
Makes burn the faiths that cool, and cools the doubts that burn: —
I.
“’Twixt this and dawn, three hours my soul will smite
With prickly seconds, or less tolerably
With dull-blade minutes flatwise slapping me.
Wait, Heart! Time moves. ”

“ To the Tournament under the ladies’ eyes
Where jousted Heart and Brain.
II.
“‘Blow, herald, blow!’ There entered Heart,
A youth in crimson and gold.
‘Blow, herald, blow!’ Brain stood apart,
Steel-armored, glittering, cold. ”