Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

The awful shadow of some unseen PowerFloats though unseen among us,—visitingThis various world with as inconstant wingAs summer winds that creep from flower to flower,—Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,5It visits with inconstant glanceEach human heart and countenance;Like hues and harmonies of evening,—Like clouds in starlight widely spread,—Like memory of music fled,—10Like aught that for its grace may beDear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrateWith thine own hues all thou dost shine uponOf human thought or form,—where art thou gone?15Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?Ask why the sunlight not for everWeaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river,Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,20Why fear and dream and death and birthCast on the daylight of this earthSuch gloom,—why man has such a scopeFor love and hate, despondency and hope?

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever25To sage or poet these responses given—Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven,Remain the records of their vain endeavour,Frail spells—whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,From all we hear and all we see,30Doubt, chance, and mutability.Thy light alone—like mist o'er mountains driven,Or music by the night-wind sentThrough strings of some still instrument,Or moonlight on a midnight stream,35Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds departAnd come, for some uncertain moments lent.Man were immortal, and omnipotent,Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,40Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.Thou messenger of sympathies,That wax and wane in lovers' eyes—Thou—that to human thought art nourishment,Like darkness to a dying flame!45Depart not as thy shadow came,Depart not—lest the grave should be,Like life and fear, a dark reality.

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and spedThrough many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,50And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuingHopes of high talk with the departed dead.I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;I was not heard—I saw them not—When musing deeply on the lot55Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooingAll vital things that wake to bringNews of birds and blossoming,—Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!60

I vowed that I would dedicate my powersTo thee and thine—have I not kept the vow?With beating heart and streaming eyes, even nowI call the phantoms of a thousand hoursEach from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers65Of studious zeal or love's delightOutwatched with me the envious night—They know that never joy illumed my browUnlinked with hope that thou wouldst freeThis world from its dark slavery,70That thou—O awful Loveliness,Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

The day becomes more solemn and sereneWhen noon is past—there is a harmonyIn autumn, and a lustre in its sky,75Which through the summer is not heard or seen,As if it could not be, as if it had not been!Thus let thy power, which like the truthOf nature on my passive youthDescended, to my onward life supply80Its calm—to one who worships thee,And every form containing thee,Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bindTo fear himself, and love all human kind.