We, like the leaf, the summit, or the wave, Reflect the light our common nature gave, But every sunbeam, falling from her throne, Wears on our hearts some coloring of our own Chilled in the slave, and burning in the free, Like the sealed cavern by the sparkling sea; Lost, like the lightning in the sullen clod, Or shedding radiance, like the smiles of God; Pure, pale in Virtue, as the star above, Or quivering roseate on the leaves of Love; Glaring like noontide, where it glows upon Ambition's sands,--the desert in the sun,-- Or soft suffusing o'er the varied scene Life's common coloring,--intellectual green. Thus Heaven, repeating its material plan, Arched over all the rainbow mind of man; But he who, blind to universal laws, Sees but effects, unconscious of their cause,-- Believes each image in itself is bright, Not robed in drapery of reflected light,-- Is like the rustic who, amidst his toil, Has found some crystal in his meagre soil, And, lost in rapture, thinks for him alone Earth worked her wonders on the sparkling stone, Nor dreams that Nature, with as nice a line, Carved countless angles through the boundless mine. Thus err the many, who, entranced to find Unwonted lustre in some clearer mind, Believe that Genius sets the laws at naught Which chain the pinions of our wildest thought; Untaught to measure, with the eye of art, The wandering fancy or the wayward heart; Who match the little only with the less, And gaze in rapture at its slight excess, Proud of a pebble, as the brightest gem Whose light might crown an emperor's diadem. And, most of all, the pure ethereal fire Which seems to radiate from the poet's lyre Is to the world a mystery and a charm, An AEgis wielded on a mortal's arm, While Reason turns her dazzled eye away, And bows her sceptre to her subject's sway; And thus the poet, clothed with godlike state, Usurped his Maker's title--to create; He, whose thoughts differing not in shape, but dress, What others feel more fitly can express, Sits like the maniac on his fancied throne, Peeps through the bars, and calls the world his own.