Have we not from the earth drawn juices

Too fine for earth's sordid uses?

Have I heard, have I seen

All I feel, all I know?
Doth my heart overween ?
Or could it have been
Long ago?

Sometimes a breath floats by me,
An odor from Dreamland sent,
That makes the ghost seem nigh me
Of a splendor that came and went,
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
In what diviner sphere,
Of memories that stay not and go not,
Like music beard once by an ear

That cannot forget or reclaim it,
A something so shy, it would shame it

To make it a show,

A something too vague, could I name it, For others to know,

As if I had lived it or dreamed it,

As if I had acted or schemed it,
Long ago!

And yet, could I live it over,

This life that stirs in my brain, Could I be both maiden and lover, Moon and tide, bee and clover,

As I seem to have been, once again, Could I but speak it and show it,

40

50

Life is a leaf of paper white
Whereon each one of us may write
His word or two, and then comes night.

'Lo, time and space enough,' we cry,

To write an epic !' so we try

Our nibs upon the edge, and die.

Muse not which way the pen to hold,
Luck hates the slow and loves the bold,
Soon come the darkness and the cold.

Greatly begin! though thou have time
But for a line, be that sublime,
Not failure, but low aim, is crime.

Ir mounts athwart the windy hill Through sallow slopes of upland bare, And Fancy climbs with foot-fall still

Its narrowing curves that end in air.

By day, a warmer-hearted blue

Stoops softly to that topmost swell; Its thread-like windings seem a clue To gracious climes where all is well.

By night, far yonder, I surmise

An ampler world than clips my ken, Where the great stars of happier skies Commingle nobler fates of men.

I look and long, then haste me home,
Still master of my secret rare;

10

THE electric nerve, whose instantaneous thrill

Makes next-door gossips of the antipodes,

1 See Lowell's letters to Professor Charles Eliot Norton, February 2, and February 26, 1874, especially the second letter. Lowell was in Florence when Agassiz died. His death,' he says, 'came home to me in a singular way, growing into my consciousness from day to day as if it were a graft new-set, that by degrees be came part of my own wood and drew a greater share of my sap than belonged to it, as grafts sometimes will.' (Lowell's Letters, Harper and Brothers, vol. ii, pp. 115116.) See also the references in note on p. 211.