The remotest experience.
Other men lead a starved existence, meanwhile, like hawks, that
would fain keep on the wing, and trust to pick up a sparrow now
and then.
There are already essays and poems, the growth of this land,
which are not in vain, all which, however, we could conveniently
have stowed in the till of our chest. If the gods permitted
their own inspiration to be breathed in vain, these might be
overlooked in the crowd, but the accents of truth are as sure to
be heard at last on earth as in heaven. They already seem
ancient, and in some measure have lost the traces of their modern
birth. Here are they who
"ask for that which is our whole life's light,
For the perpetual, true and clear insight."
I remember a few sentences which spring like the sward in its
native pasture, where its roots were never disturbed, and not as
if spread over a sandy embankment; answering to the poet's
prayer,
"Let us set so just
A rate on knowledge, that the world may trust
The poet's sentence, and not still aver
Each art is to itself a flatterer."
But, above all, in our native port, did we not frequent the
peaceful games of the Lyceum, from which a new era will be dated
to New England, as from the games of Greece. For if Herodotus
carried his history to Olympia to read, after the cestus and the
race, have we not heard such histories recited there, which since
our countrymen have read, as made Greece sometimes to be
forgotten? - Philosophy, too, has there her grove and portico, not
wholly unfrequented in these days.
Lately the victor, whom all Pindars praised, has won another
palm, contending with
"Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young,
And always keep us so."
What earth or sea, mountain or stream, or Muses' spring or grove,
is safe from his all-searching ardent eye, who drives off
Phoebus' beaten track, visits unwonted zones, makes the gelid
Hyperboreans glow, and the old polar serpent writhe, and many a
Nile flow back and hide his head!
That Phaeton of our day,
Who'd make another milky way,
And burn the world up with his ray;
By us an undisputed seer, -
Who'd drive his flaming car so near
Unto our shuddering mortal sphere,
Disgracing all our slender worth,
And scorching up the living earth,
To prove his heavenly birth.
The silver spokes, the golden tire,
Are glowing with unwonted fire,
And ever nigher roll and nigher;
The pins and axle melted are,
The silver radii fly afar,
Ah, he will spoil his Father's car!
Who let him have the steeds he cannot steer?
Henceforth the sun will not shine for a year;
And we shall Ethiops all appear.
