Some men I found embodiments of all The goodness, all the greatness, I had dreamed; Men seeming gods, bestowing benefits As suns their beams, as seas and skies their showers. 190 Others as dwarfs, as despots, by compare, Devoured with greed, consumed with jealousy. But truth taught charity, gave me to see, As face to face one sees familiar friend, Why men are not alike in magnitude. Some souls, than others, have more summits climbed, More light absorbed, more moral might evolved. Dowered are they with wealth from earlier spheres; Hence wiser, worthier, than those they lead Through precept's vale, up steep example's height, 200 To where love, beauty, wealth, power, glory, reign. While some, innately noble, are borne down By weight of weaknesses inherited, By passions fierce, propensities depraved, Malific legacy of centuries, That much of their true worthiness obscures, While spirit strives with flesh for mastery, For higher culture and for added might. And yet anon such souls effulgent shine-- As bursts the April beam through banks of cloud-- 210 In glory from which envy shades its eyes, While stands detraction staring, stricken dumb; The glory of a great intelligence, Which mortal mists can dim but for a time. Spirits, like stars, still differ in degree, And cannot show an even excellence, Unequal in their first nobility. Great tells of greater--littleness of less; Time's hills and vales[13] but type eternity. Truth taught me more, but bade me silent be; 220 And I had teachers else--toil, prayer, and pain, With days and nights of misery's martyrdom, Alone and lorn in grief's Gethsemane: Till storm above, and earthquake underneath, Shook down thought's prison house, broke bolt and bar, And agony set inspiration free. 'Tis thus the Great Musician tunes the harp That He would strike--strikes thus the harp in tune; Sweeping with sorrow's hand the quivering strings, That they may cry aloud, and haply sound 230 A loftier and more enduring lay. CANTO TWO The Soul of Song[1] Alone my soul upon a mighty hill, Ancient with lingering snows of vanished years, Where towering forms the templed azure fill, Wooed by the breath of woodland atmospheres; Where Nature, throned in solitude, reveres The God whose glory she doth symbolize, And on these altars, watered by her tears, Spreads far around the fragrant sacrifice Whose incense wafts her sweet memorial to the skies. 240 Here will I rest, where I have loved to roam, From childhood's rose-hued, scarce-remembered day, And found my pensive soul's congenial home Far from the depths where human passions play. Born at their feet, my own have learned to stray Familiar o'er these pathless heights, and feel, As now, the mind assume a loftier sway, Soaring for themes that o'er its summits steal, Beyond all thought to reach, all utterance to reveal.