There let me gaze, till I become In soul, with what I gaze on, wed! To feel the universe my home; To have before my mind--instead Of the sick-room, the mortal strife, The turmoil for a little breath-- The pure eternal course of life, Not human combatings with death! Thus feeling, gazing, might I grow Composed, refreshed, ennobled, clear; Then willing let my spirit go To work or wait elsewhere or here! THE FUTURE. A wanderer is man from his birth. He was born in a ship On the breast of the river of Time; Brimming with wonder and joy, He spreads out his arms to the light, Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream. As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been. Whether he wakes Where the snowy mountainous pass, Echoing the screams of the eagles, Hems in its gorges the bed Of the new-born, clear-flowing stream; Whether he first sees light Where the river in gleaming rings Sluggishly winds through the plain; Whether in sound of the swallowing sea,-- As is the world on the banks, So is the mind of the man. Vainly does each, as he glides, Fable and dream Of the lands which the river of Time Had left ere he woke on its breast, Or shall reach when his eyes have been closed. Only the tract where he sails He wots of; only the thoughts, Raised by the objects he passes, are his. Who can see the green earth any more As she was by the sources of Time? Who imagines her fields as they lay In the sunshine, unworn by the plough? Who thinks as they thought, The tribes who then roamed on her breast, Her vigorous, primitive sons? What girl Now reads in her bosom as clear As Rebekah read, when she sate At eve by the palm-shaded well? Who guards in her breast As deep, as pellucid a spring Of feeling, as tranquil, as sure? What bard, At the height of his vision, can deem Of God, of the world, of the soul, With a plainness as near, As flashing, as Moses felt, When he lay in the night by his flock On the starlit Arabian waste? Can rise and obey The beck of the Spirit like him? This tract which the river of Time Now flows through with us, is the plain. Gone is the calm of its earlier shore. Bordered by cities, and hoarse With a thousand cries is its stream. And we on its breast, our minds Are confused as the cries which we hear, Changing and short as the sights which we see. And we say that repose has fled Forever the course of the river of Time. That cities will crowd to its edge In a blacker, incessanter line; That the din will be more on its banks, Denser the trade on its stream, Flatter the plain where it flows, Fiercer the sun overhead; That never will those on its breast See an ennobling sight, Drink of the feeling of quiet again.