“Come from the outer throng!” (Such was the burden it bore,) “Thou who hast gone before, Hither! and sing us a song, Far from the round of the town and the sound of the great world’s roar!” O masterful voice of Youth; That will have, like the upland wind, its own wild way! O choral words, that with every season rise Like the warblings of orchard-birds at break of day! O faces, fresh with the light of morning skies! No marvel world-worn toilers seek you here, Even as they life renew, from year to year, In woods and meadows lit with blossoming May; But O, blithe voices, that have such sweet power, Unto your high behest this summer hour What answer has the poet? how shall he frame his lay? II. THEME. “What shall my song rehearse?” I said To a wise bard, whose hoary head Is bowed, like Kearsarge crouching low Beneath a winter weight of snow, But whose songs of passion, joy, or scorn, Within a fiery heart are born. “What can I spread, what proper feast For these young Magi of the East? What wisdom find, what mystic lore, What chant they have not heard before? Strange words of old has every tongue Those happy cloistered hills among; For each riddle I divine They can answer me with nine; Their footsteps by the Muse are led, Their lips on Plato’s honey fed; Their eyes have skill to read the page Of Theban bard or Attic sage; For them all Nature’s mysteries,— The deep-down secrets of the seas, The cyclone’s whirl, the lightning’s shock, The language of the riven rock; They know the starry sisters seven,— What clouds the molten suns enfold, And all the golden woof of heaven Unravelled in their lens behold! Gazing in a thousand eyes, So rapt and clear, so wonder-wise, What shall my language picture, then, Beyond their wont—that has not reached their ken? “What else are poets used to sing, Who sing of youth, than laurelled fame and love? But ah! it needs no words to move Young hearts to some impassioned vow, To whom already on the wing The blind god hastens. Even now Their pulses quiver with a thrill Than all that wisdom wiser still. Nor any need to tell of rustling bays, Of honor ever at the victor’s hand, To them who at the portals stand Like mettled steeds,—each eager from control To leap, and, where the corso lies ablaze, Let out his speed and soonest pass the goal.