Читать книгу The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 44, June, 1861 - Various - Страница 4

It melts and seethes, the chaos that shall grow

To adamant beneath the house of life:

In hissing hatred atoms clash, and go

To meet intenser strife.

And ere that fever leaves the granite veins,

Down thunders o'er the waste a torrid sea:

Now Flood, now Fire, alternate despot reigns,—

Immortal foes to be.

Built by the warring elements, they rise,

The massive earth-foundations, tier on tier,

Where slimy monsters with unhuman eyes

Their hideous heads uprear.

The building of the world is not for you

That glare upon each other, and devour:

Race floating after race fades out of view,

Till beauty springs from power

Meanwhile from crumbling rocks and shoals of death

Shoots up rank verdure to the hidden sun;

The gulfs are eddying to the vague, sweet breath

Of richer life begun,—

Richer and sweeter far than aught before,

Though rooted in the grave of what has been.

Unnumbered burials yet must heap Earth's floor,

Ere she her heir shall win;

And ever nobler lives and deaths more grand

For nourishment of that which is to come:

While 'mid the ruins of the work she planned

Sits Nature, blind and dumb.

For whom or what she plans, she knows no more

Than any mother of her unborn child;

Yet beautiful forewarnings murmur o'er

Her desolations wild.

Slowly the clamor and the clash subside:

Earth's restlessness her patient hopes subdue:

Mild oceans shoreward heave a pulse-like tide:

The skies are veined with blue.

And life works through the growing quietness

To bring some darling mystery into form:

Beauty her fairest Possible would dress

In colors pure and warm.

Within the depths of palpitating seas

A tender tint;—anon a line of grace

Some lovely thought from its dull atom frees,

The coming joy to trace;—

A pencilled moss on tablets of the sand,

Such as shall veil the unbudded maiden-blush

Of beauty yet to gladden the green land;—

A breathing, through the hush,

Of some sealed perfume longing to burst out

And give its prisoned rapture to the air;—

A brooding hope, a promise through a doubt

Is whispered everywhere.

And, every dawn a shade more clear, the skies

A flush as from the heart of heaven disclose:

Through earth and sea and air a message flies,

Prophetic of the Rose.

At last a morning comes of sunshine still,

When not a dew-drop trembles on the grass;

When all winds sleep, and every pool and rill

Is like a burnished glass

Where a long-looked-for guest may lean to gaze;

When day on earth rests royally,—a crown

Of molten glory, flashing diamond rays,

From heaven let lightly down.

In golden silence, breathless, all things stand.

What answer meets this questioning repose?

A sudden gush of light and odors bland,

And, lo! the Rose! the Rose!

The birds break into canticles around;

The winds lift Jubilate to the skies:

For, twin-born with the rose on Eden-ground,

Love blooms in human eyes.

Life's marvellous queen-flower blossoms only so,

In dust of low ideals rooted fast.

Ever the Beautiful is moulded slow

From truth in errors past.

What fiery fields of Chaos must be won,

What battling Titans rear themselves a tomb,

What births and resurrections greet the sun,

Before the rose can bloom!

And of some wonder-blossom yet we dream,

Whereof the time that is infolds the seed,—

Some flower of light, to which the rose shall seem

A fair and fragile weed.