ON THE SAME PICTURE

AYE, well I know 'tis ghastly to descend that valley:
Preachers, musicians, poets, painters, always render it,
Philosophs exploit — the battlefield, the ship at
     sea, the myriad beds, all lands,
All, all the past have enter'd, the ancientest humanity we
     know,
Syria's, India's, Egypt's, Greece's, Rome's;
Till now for us under our very eyes spreading the same
     today,
Grim, ready, the same to-day, for entrance, yours and
     mine,
Here, here 'tis limn'd.

1892 1897

A THOUGHT OF COLUMBUS

THE mystery of mysteries, the crude and hurried ceaseless
    flame, spontaneous, bearing on itself.
The bubble and the huge, round, concrete orb!
A breath of Deity, as thence the bulging universe unfolding!
The many issuing cycles from their precedent minute!
The eras of the soul incepting in an hour,
Haply the widest, farthest evolutions of the world and
     man.

Thousands and thousands of miles hence, and now four
     centuries back,
A mortal impulse thrilling its brain cell,
Reck'd or unreck'd, the birth can no longer be postpon'd:
A phantom of the moment, mystic, stalking, sudden,
Only a silent thought, yet toppling down of more than walls
     of brass or stone.
(A flutter at the darkness' edge as if old Time's and Space's
     secret near revealing.)
A thought! a definite thought works out in shape.
Four hundred years roll on.
The rapid cumulus — trade, navigation, war, peace,
     democracy, roll on;
The restless armies and the fleets of time following their
     leader — the old camps of ages pitch'd in newer,
     larger areas,
The tangl'd, long-deferr'd, éclaircissement of human life and
     hopes boldly begins untying,
As here to-day up-grows the Western World.

(An added word yet to my song, far Discoverer, as ne'er
     before sent back to son of earth —
If still thou hearest, hear me,
Voicing as now — lands, races, arts, bravas to thee,
O'er the long backward path to thee — one vast
     consensus north, south, east, west,
Soul plaudits! acclamation! reverent echoes!
One manifold, huge memory to thee! oceans and lands!
The modern world to thee and thought of thee!)

(1891)
1897