424
EPIPSYCHIDION: FRAGMENTS
Its birth is darkness, and its growth desire;
Untameable and fleet and fierce as fire,
Not to be touched but to be felt alone,
It fills the world with glory—and is gone.
•••••••
It floats with rainbow pinions o'er the stream 150
Of life, which flows, like adream
Into the light of morning, to the grave
As to an ocean . . . .
•••••••
What is that joy which serene infancy
Perceives not, as the hours content them[1] by, 155
Each in a chain of blossoms, yet enjoys
The shapes of this new world, in[2] giant toys
Wrought by the busyever new?
Remembrance borrows Fancy's glass, to show
These forms moresincere 160
Than now they are, than then, perhaps, they were.
When everything familiar seemed to be
Wonderful, and the immortality
Of this great world, which all things must inherit,
Was felt as one with the awakening spirit, 165
Unconscious of itself, and of the strange
Distinctions which in its proceeding change
It feels and knows, and mourns as if each were
A desolation . . . .
•••••••
Were it not a sweet refuge, Emily. 170
For all those exiles from the dull insane
Who vex this pleasant world with pride and pain,
For all that band of sister-spirits known
To one another by a voiceless tone?
•••••••
If day should part us night will mend division 175
And if sleep parts us—we will meet in vision
And if life parts us—we will mix in death
Yielding our mite [?] of unreluctant breath
Death cannot part us—we must meet again
In all in nothing in delight in pain: 180
How, why or when or where—it matters not
So that we share an undivided lot. . . . .
•••••••
And we will move possessing and possessed
Wherever beauty on the earth's bare [?] breast
Lies like the shadow of thy soul—till we 185
Become one being with the world we see. . . .
Untameable and fleet and fierce as fire,
Not to be touched but to be felt alone,
It fills the world with glory—and is gone.
•••••••
It floats with rainbow pinions o'er the stream 150
Of life, which flows, like adream
Into the light of morning, to the grave
As to an ocean . . . .
•••••••
What is that joy which serene infancy
Perceives not, as the hours content them[1] by, 155
Each in a chain of blossoms, yet enjoys
The shapes of this new world, in[2] giant toys
Wrought by the busyever new?
Remembrance borrows Fancy's glass, to show
These forms moresincere 160
Than now they are, than then, perhaps, they were.
When everything familiar seemed to be
Wonderful, and the immortality
Of this great world, which all things must inherit,
Was felt as one with the awakening spirit, 165
Unconscious of itself, and of the strange
Distinctions which in its proceeding change
It feels and knows, and mourns as if each were
A desolation . . . .
•••••••
Were it not a sweet refuge, Emily. 170
For all those exiles from the dull insane
Who vex this pleasant world with pride and pain,
For all that band of sister-spirits known
To one another by a voiceless tone?
•••••••
If day should part us night will mend division 175
And if sleep parts us—we will meet in vision
And if life parts us—we will mix in death
Yielding our mite [?] of unreluctant breath
Death cannot part us—we must meet again
In all in nothing in delight in pain: 180
How, why or when or where—it matters not
So that we share an undivided lot. . . . .
•••••••
And we will move possessing and possessed
Wherever beauty on the earth's bare [?] breast
Lies like the shadow of thy soul—till we 185
Become one being with the world we see. . . .
