The Poetical Works of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Bart. M.P Part 106

Yes, while thou hopest, music fills the air; While thou rememberest, life reclothes the clod; While thou canst feel the electric chain of prayer, Breathe but a thought, and be a soul with G.o.d!

Let not these forms of matter bound thine eye, He who the vanis.h.i.+ng point of Human things Lifts from the landscape--lost amidst the sky, Has found the Ideal which the poet sings-- Has pierced the pall around the senses thrown, And is himself a poet--though unknown.

[N] Midsummer's Night Dream.

[O] According to a belief in the East, which is a.s.sociated with one of the loveliest and most familiar of Oriental superst.i.tions the bird of Paradise is never seen to rest upon the earth--and its nest is never to be found.

[P] It is supposed by many of the commentators on Dante, that in the form of his lost Beatrice, who guides him in his Vision of Heaven, the poet allegorizes Religious Faith.

[Q] The gloomy Typhon of Egypt a.s.sumes many of the mystic attributes of the Principle of Life which, in the Grecian Apotheosis of the Indian Bacchus, is represented in so genial a character of exuberant joy and everlasting youth.

[R] "What Plato thought, and G.o.dlike Cato was."--POPE.

EPIGRAPH.

"COGITO--ERGO SUM."

Self of myself, unto the future age Pa.s.s, murmuring low whate'er thine own has taught, "I think, and therefore am,"--exclaim'd the Sage: As now the Man, so henceforth be the page; A life, because a thought.

Through various seas, exploring sh.o.r.es unknown, A soul went forth, and here bequeaths its chart-- Here Doubt retains the question, Grief the groan, And here may Faith still s.h.i.+ne, as when she shone And saved a sinking heart.

From the lost nectar-streams of golden youth, From rivers loud with Babel's madding throng, From wells whence Lore invokes reluctant Truth, And that blest pool the wings of angels smooth, Life fills mine urns of song.

Calmly to time I leave these images Of things experienced, suffer'd, felt, and seen; Fruits shed or tempest-torn from changeful trees, Sh.e.l.ls murmuring back the tides in distant seas-- Signs where a Soul has been.

As for the form Thought takes--the rudest hill Echoes denied to gardens back may give; Life speaks in all the forms which Thought can fill; If thought once born can perish not--here still I think, and therefore live!

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