Poems of Sentiment and Imagination/Resolution
RESOLUTION.
Room, room for the freed spirit! Let it fling
Its pinions worn with bondage once more wide,
And if in earth or air there is a thing
To stay its soaring, let the heavens chide!
Away, the silken bondage of young dreams;
No more in gentle dalliance I'll lay
My hand upon my lute, like one who seems
In half unconscious idleness to play.
But all there is in me of living soul,
Of high, proud daring, or of untried trust,
Shall not be subject longer to control;
For my desire is upward, and I must
Spurn back the fetters of the slothful past
As a loosed captive tramples on his chain;
From now, henceforth, my destiny is cast,
And what I will, I surely shall attain.
Onward and upward! strengthening in their flight,
My thoughts must "all be eagle thoughts," nor bend
Their pinions downward, until on the height
That nurses Helicon's pure fount I stand.
Onward, my soul! nor either shrink nor turn,
Be cold to pleasure and be calm to pain;
However much the yielding heart may yearn.
Listen not, listen not, it is in vain!
Upward! "a feeling like the sense of wings,"
A proud, triumphant feeling buoys me up,
And my soul drinks refreshment from the streams
That fill forever joy's enchanted cup.
A glorious sense of power within me lies,
A knowledge of my yet untested strength,
And my impatient spirit only sighs
For the far goal to be attained at length.