Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/549

1850-60.] COATES KINNEY. 533 Think ye they rushed up with a sudden- ness Of rockets sportively shot into heaven, And flai'ed to their immortal places there ? The vulgar years through which ambi- tion gropes, Reaching and feeling for his destiny, Are only years of chaos, tallied not On the eternal rocks, but covered deep Below the stratified history of a world. Celebrity by some great accident, Some single opportunity, is like Aladdin's palace in the wizard tale. Vanished when envy steals the charm away. But Thought up-pyramids itself to fame By husbandry of opportunities. Grade after grade constructing to that height, Which, seen above the far horizon, seems To peak among the stars. Go mummify Thy name within that architectural pile Which others' intellect has builded; none — For all the hieroglyphs of glory — none Save but the builder's name, shall sound along The everlasting ages. Heart and brain Of thine must resolutely yoke themselves To slow-paced years of toil, else all the trumps Of hero-heraldry that ever twanged. Gathered in one mad blare above the graves, Shall not avail to resurrect thy name To the salvation of remembrance then When once the letters of it have slunk back Into the alphabet from off thy tomb. Aye, thou must think, think ! Marble frets and crumbles Back into undistinguishable dust At last, and epitaphs grooved into brass, Yield piecemeal to the hungry elements ; But truths that di-op plumb to the depths of time, Anchor the name forever: — thou must think Such truths, and speak, or write, or act them forth — Thyself must do this — or the centuries Shall take thee, as the maslstrom gulps a wreck, To the dread bottom of oblivion. Think! A bibulous memory sponging up the thoughts Of dead men, is not thought ; it holds no sway Where genius is : not freighted argosies. But thunder-throated guns of battle-ships Command the high seas. Destiny is not About thee, but within ; thyself must make Thyself: the agonizing throes of Thought, These bring forth glory, bring forth destiny. THE EDEN OF WISHES. It is at the foot of a mountain, Whose high brow is bared before God, There gushes a crystalline fountain. And makes a bright brook in the sod. And the sod spreads away o'er a valley » That opens where blue waters be ; And the brook with meandering dally Goes babbling along to the sea. There snowy sails pass, like the lazy White clouds of a summery sky — Appear and evanish where hazy Infinity fences the eye. Here falls over Pan's mossy pillows The green gloom of tropical groves, And Poesy hears the low billows In airs that come up from the coves. And here, while the sands of light sunny Sift down through the leaves from above,