"Once more, once more, after long pain and toil, And yet not long, if I should count by years, I breathe my native air, and tread the soil I trod in childhood; if I shed no tears, No happy tears, 't is that their fount is dry, And joy that cannot weep must sigh, must sigh.
V
"These leaves, my boyish books in days of yore, When, as the weeks sped by, I seemed to stand Ever upon the brink of some wild lore --These leaves shall make my bed, and -- for the hand Of God is on me, chilling brain and breath --I shall not ask a softer couch in death.
VI
"Here was it that I saw, or dreamed I saw, I know not which, that shape of love and light.
Spirit of Song! have I not owned thy law?
Have I not taught, or striven to teach the right, And kept my heart as clean, my life as sweet, As mortals may, when mortals mortals meet?
VII
"Thou know'st how I went forth, my youthful breast On fire with thee, amid the paths of men;Once in my wanderings, my lone footsteps pressed A mountain forest; in a sombre glen, Down which its thundrous boom a cataract flung, A little bird, unheeded, built and sung.
VIII
"So fell my voice amid the whirl and rush Of human passions; if unto my art Sorrow hath sometimes owed a gentler gush, I know it not; if any Poet-heart Hath kindled at my songs its light divine, I know it not; no ray came back to mine.
IX
"Alone in crowds, once more I sought to make Of senseless things my friends; the clouds that burn Above the sunset, and the flowers that shake Their odors in the wind -- these would not turn Their faces from me; far from cities, I Forgot the scornful world that passed me by.
X
"Yet even the world's cold slights I might have borne, Nor fled, though sorrowing; but I shrank at last When one sweet face, too sweet, I thought, for scorn, Looked scornfully upon me; then I passed From all that youth had dreamed or manhood planned, Into the self that none would understand.
XI
"She was -- I never wronged her womanhood By crowning it with praises not her own --She was all earth's, and earth's, too, in that mood When she brings forth her fairest; I atone Now, in this fading brow and failing frame, That such a soul such soul as mine could tame.
XII
"Clay to its kindred clay! I loved, in sooth, Too deeply and too purely to be blest;With something more of lust and less of truth She would have sunk all blushes on my breast;And -- but I must not blame her -- in my ear Death whispers! and the end, thank God! draws near!"
XIII
Hist! on the perfect silence of the place Comes and dies off a sound like far-off rain With voices mingled; on the Poet's face A shadow, where no shadow should have lain, Falls the next moment: nothing meets his sight, Yet something moves betwixt him and the light.
XIV
And a voice murmurs, "Wonder not, but hear!
ME to behold again thou need'st not seek;Yet by the dim-felt influence on the air, And by the mystic shadow on thy cheek, Know, though thou mayst not touch with fleshly hands, The genius of thy life beside thee stands!
XV
"Unto no fault, O weary-hearted one!
Unto no fault of man's thou ow'st thy fate;All human hearts that beat this earth upon, All human thoughts and human passions wait Upon the genuine bard, to him belong, And help in their own way the Poet's song.
XVI
"How blame the world? for the world hast thou wrought?
