I.

Sit here and muse!--it is an antique room-- High-roof'd with casements, through whose purple pane Unwilling Daylight steals amidst the gloom, Shy as a fearful stranger. There THEY reign (In loftier pomp than waking life had known), The Kings of Thought!--not crown'd until the grave. When Agamemnon sinks into the tomb, The beggar Homer mounts the Monarch's throne! Ye ever-living and imperial Souls, Who rule us from the page in which ye breathe, All that divide us from the clod ye gave! Law--Order--Love--Intelligence--the Sense Of Beauty--Music and the Minstrel's wreath!-- What were our wanderings if without your goals? As air and light, the glory ye dispense, Becomes our being--who of us can tell What he had been, had Cadmus never taught The art that fixes into form the thought-- Had Plato never spoken from his cell, Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?-- Kinder all earth hath grown since genial Shakspeare sung!