To Bayard Taylor.

To range, deep-wrapt, along a heavenly height,     O'erseeing all that man but undersees;     To loiter down lone alleys of delight,     And hear the beating of the hearts of trees,     And think the thoughts that lilies speak in white     By greenwood pools and pleasant passages;     With healthy dreams a-dream in flesh and soul,     To pace, in mighty meditations drawn,     From out the forest to the open knoll     Where much thyme is, whence blissful leagues of lawn     Betwixt the fringing woods to southward roll     By tender inclinations; mad with dawn,     Ablaze with fires that flame in silver dew     When each small globe doth glass the morning-star,     Long ere the sun, sweet-smitten through and through     With dappled revelations read afar,     Suffused with saintly ecstasies of blue     As all the holy eastern heavens are, -     To fare thus fervid to what daily toil     Employs thy spirit in that larger Land     Where thou art gone; to strive, but not to moil     In nothings that do mar the artist's hand,     Not drudge unriched, as grain rots back to soil, -     No profit out of death, - going, yet still at stand, -     Giving what life is here in hand to-day     For that that's in to-morrow's bush, perchance, -     Of this year's harvest none in the barn to lay,     All sowed for next year's crop, - a dull advance     In curves that come but by another way     Back to the start, - a thriftless thrift of ants     Whose winter wastes their summer; O my Friend,     Freely to range, to muse, to toil, is thine:     Thine, now, to watch with Homer sails that bend     Unstained by Helen's beauty o'er the brine     Tow'rds some clean Troy no Hector need defend     Nor flame devour; or, in some mild moon's shine,     Where amiabler winds the whistle heed,     To sail with Shelley o'er a bluer sea,     And mark Prometheus, from his fetters freed,     Pass with Deucalion over Italy,     While bursts the flame from out his eager reed     Wild-stretching towards the West of destiny;     Or, prone with Plato, Shakespeare and a throng     Of bards beneath some plane-tree's cool eclipse     To gaze on glowing meads where, lingering long,     Psyche's large Butterfly her honey sips;     Or, mingling free in choirs of German song,     To learn of Goethe's life from Goethe's lips;     These, these are thine, and we, who still are dead,     Do yearn - nay, not to kill thee back again     Into this charnel life, this lowlihead,     Not to the dark of sense, the blinking brain,     The hugged delusion drear, the hunger fed     On husks of guess, the monarchy of pain,     The cross of love, the wrench of faith, the shame     Of science that cannot prove proof is, the twist     Of blame for praise and bitter praise for blame,     The silly stake and tether round the wrist     By fashion fixed, the virtue that doth claim     The gains of vice, the lofty mark that's missed     By all the mortal space 'twixt heaven and hell,     The soul's sad growth o'er stationary friends     Who hear us from our height not well, not well,     The slant of accident, the sudden bends     Of purpose tempered strong, the gambler's spell,     The son's disgrace, the plan that e'er depends     On others' plots, the tricks that passion plays     (I loving you, you him, he none at all),     The artist's pain - to walk his blood-stained ways,     A special soul, yet judged as general -     The endless grief of art, the sneer that slays,     The war, the wound, the groan, the funeral pall -     Not into these, bright spirit, do we yearn     To bring thee back, but oh, to be, to be     Unbound of all these gyves, to stretch, to spurn     The dark from off our dolorous lids, to see     Our spark, Conjecture, blaze and sunwise burn,     And suddenly to stand again by thee!     Ah, not for us, not yet, by thee to stand:     For us, the fret, the dark, the thorn, the chill;     For us, to call across unto thy Land,     "Friend, get thee to the minstrels' holy hill,     And kiss those brethren for us, mouth and hand,     And make our duty to our master Will."     Baltimore, 1879.