So call not waste that barren cone Above the floral zone, Where forests starve: It is pure use; What sheaves like those which here we glean and bind Of a celestial Ceres and the Muse? Ages are thy days, Thou grand expresser of the present tense, And type of permanence ! Firm ensign of the fatal Being, Amid these coward shapes of joy and grief, That will not bide the seeing! Hither we bring Our insect miseries to the rocks; And the whole flight, with pestering wing, Vanish beside these dedicated blocks, Replacing frieze and architrave; Yet flowers each stone rosette and metope brave; Still is the haughty pile erect Of the old building Intellect. Complement of human kind, O barren mound, thy plenties fill! We fool and prate; Thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times one sense For which we all our lifetime grope, Thou, in our astronomy An opaker star, Seen haply from afar, Above the horizon's hoop, A moment, by the railway troop, As o'er some bolder height they speed, By circumspect ambition, By errant gain, By feasters and the frivolous, Recallest us, And makest sane. Mute orator! well skilled to plead, And send conviction without phrase, Thou dost supply The shortness of our days, And promise, on thy Founder's truth, Long morrow to this mortal youth. FABLE. THE mountain and the squirrel Had a quarrel; And the former called the latter 'Little Prig.' Bun replied, 'You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And a sphere. And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large as you, And not half so spry. I'll not deny you make |