Читать книгу The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell - James Russell Lowell - Страница 158

Table of Contents

He spoke of Burns: men rude and rough

Pressed round to hear the praise of one

Whose heart was made of manly, simple stuff,

As homespun as their own.

And, when he read, they forward leaned,

Drinking, with thirsty hearts and ears,

His brook-like songs whom glory never weaned

From humble smiles and tears.

Slowly there grew a tender awe,

Sun-like, o'er faces brown and hard,

As if in him who read they felt and saw

Some presence of the bard.

It was a sight for sin and wrong

And slavish tyranny to see,

A sight to make our faith more pure and strong

In high humanity.

I thought, these men will carry hence

Promptings their former life above,

And something of a finer reverence

For beauty, truth, and love.

God scatters love on every side

Freely among his children all,

And always hearts are lying open wide,

Wherein some grains may fall.

There is no wind but soweth seeds

Of a more true and open life,

Which burst, unlooked for, into high-souled deeds,

With wayside beauty rife.

We find within these souls of ours

Some wild germs of a higher birth,

Which in the poet's tropic heart bear flowers

Whose fragrance fills the earth.

Within the hearts of all men lie

These promises of wider bliss,

Which blossom into hopes that cannot die,

In sunny hours like this.

All that hath been majestical

In life or death, since time began,

Is native in the simple heart of all,

The angel heart of man.

And thus, among the untaught poor,

Great deeds and feelings find a home,

That cast in shadow all the golden lore

Of classic Greece and Rome.

O mighty brother-soul of man,

Where'er thou art, in low or high,

Thy skyey arches with exulting span

O'er-roof infinity!

All thoughts that mould the age begin

Deep down within the primitive soul,

And from the many slowly upward win

To one who grasps the whole:

In his wide brain the feeling deep

That struggled on the many's tongue

Swells to a tide of thought, whose surges leap

O'er the weak thrones of wrong.

All thought begins in feeling—wide

In the great mass its base is hid,

And, narrowing up to thought, stands glorified,

A moveless pyramid.

Nor is he far astray, who deems

That every hope, which rises and grows broad

In the world's heart, by ordered impulse streams

From the great heart of God.

God wills, man hopes: in common souls

Hope is but vague and undefined,

Till from the poet's tongue the message rolls

A blessing to his kind.

Never did Poesy appear

So full of heaven to me, as when

I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear

To the lives of coarsest men.

It may be glorious to write

Thoughts that shall glad the two or three

High souls, like those far stars that come in sight

Once in a century;—

But better far it is to speak

One simple word, which now and then

Shall waken their free nature in the weak

And friendless sons of men;

To write some earnest verse or line,

Which, seeking not the praise of art,

Shall make a clearer faith and manhood shine

In the untutored heart.

He who doth this, in verse or prose,

May be forgotten in his day,

But surely shall be crowned at last with those

Who live and speak for aye.