I Slept, and Dreamed that Life was Beauty
"I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty.
Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?
Toil on, sad heart, courageously,
And thou shalt find thy dream to be
A noonday light and truth to thee."
The Dial (July 1840) p. 123
To The Ideal
"Oh! what avails it thus to dream of thee,
Thou life above me, and aspire to be
A dweller in thy air serene and pure;
I wake and must lower this life endure.
Look no more on me with sun-radiant eyes,
Mine droop so dimmed, in vain my weak sense tries
To find the color of this world of clay,—
Its hue has faded, its light died away.
In charity with life, how can I live?
What most I want, does it refuse to give.
Thou, who hast laid this spell upon my soul,
Must be to me henceforth a hope and goal.
Away, thou vision! Now must there be wrought
Armor from life in which may yet be fought
A way to thee,—thy memory shall inspire,
Although thy presence is consuming fire.
As one who may not linger in the halls,
And fair domains of his ancestral home,
Goes forth to labor, yet resolves those walls
Redeemed shall see his old age cease to roam.
So exile I myself, thou dream of youth,
Thou castle where my wild thoughts wandered free.
Yet bear a heart, which through its love and truth,
Shall earn a right to throb its last with thee.
To work! with heart resigned and spirit strong,
Subdue by patient toil Time's heavy wrong;
Through nature's dullest, as her brightest ways,
We will march onward, singing to thy praise.
Yet when our souls are in new forms arrayed,
Like thine, immortal, by immortal aid,
And with forgiving blessing stand beside,
The clay in which they toiled and long were tried.
When comes that solemn "undetermined" hour,
Light of the soul's light! present be thy power;
And welcome be thou, as a friend who waits,
With joy, a soul unsphered at heaven's gates.
The Dial (January 1841) p. 400
Farewell!
"And memories so blessed bore she hence
Of all she knew in those few earthly years
As were to her the lovely models, whence
To shape the hopes she formed for unknown spheres.
And gently then the spirit stole away,
Leaving the body in a quiet sleep,
As if 't were too much pain with living sense
To break a tie such precious years did keep;,
As if it feared to trust the waking hour,
When that form, lovely as an angel's need,
Should question why the soul left such abode,
Or why with it to heaven it might not speed.
Still lies thy child with an unspotted brow,
Earth's dust is shaken from her young feet now,
And raying light, she stands in Heaven's clear day,
Girt for an onward and victorious way;
Whom God hath housed wilt thou call back to brave
Anew those storms from which thou canst not save?"
The Dial (April 1841) p. 544.
Hymn of a Spirit Shrouded
"O God! who, in thy dear still heaven,
Dost sit, and wait to see
The errors, sufferings, and crimes
Of our humanity,
How deep must be thy Casual love!
How whole thy final care!
Since Thou, who rulest over all,
Canst see, and yet canst bear."
Æsthetic Papers (1849) pp. 211.
The Straight Road
"Beauty may be the path to highest good,
And some successfully have it pursued.
Thou, who wouldst follow, be well earned to see
That way prove not a curvéd road to thee.
The straightest path perhaps which may be sought,
Lies through the great highway men call I ought."
Manuscript, published in An Historical and Biographical Introduction to Accompany The Dial by George Willis Cooke (New York: Russell & Russell, 1961) p. II:56.
