In vain! still pines my prisoned soul
Within this curst dank dungeon-hole!
Where dimly finds ev’n heaven’s blest ray,
Through painted glass, its struggling way.
Shut in by heaps of books up-piled,
All worm-begnawed and dust-besoiled,
With yellowed papers, from the ground
To the smoked ceiling, stuck around;
Caged in with old ancestral lumber,
Cases, boxes, without number,
Broken glass, and crazy chair,
Dust and brittleness everywhere;
This is thy world, a world for a man’s soul to breathe in!
And ask I still why in my breast,
My heart beats heavy and oppressed?
And why some secret unknown sorrow
Freezes my blood, and numbs my marrow?
’Stead of the living sphere of Nature,
Where man was placed by his Creator,
Surrounds thee mouldering dust alone,
The grinning skull and skeleton.
Arise! forth to the fields, arise!
And this mysterious magic page,
From Nostradamus’ hand so sage,[n1]
Should guide thee well. Thy raptured eyes
Shall then behold what force compels
The tuneful spheres to chime together;
When, taught by Nature’s mightiest spells,
Thine innate spring of soul upwells,
As speaks one spirit to another.
In vain my thought gropes blindly here,
To make those sacred symbols clear;
Ye unseen Powers that hover near me,
Answer, I charge ye, when ye hear me!
[He opens the book, and sees the sign of the Macrocosm.][n2]
Ha! what ecstatic joy this page reveals,
At once through all my thrilling senses flowing!
Young holy zest of life my spirit feels
In every vein, in every nerve, new glowing!
Was it a God whose finger drew these signs,
That, with mild pulse of joy, and breath of rest,
Smooth the tumultuous heaving of my breast,
And with mysterious virtue spread the lines
Of Nature’s cipher bare to mortal sight?
Am I a God? so wondrous pure the light
Within me! in these tokens I behold
The powers by which all Nature is besouled.
Now may I reach the sage’s words aright;
“The world of spirits is not barred;
Thy sense is shut, thy heart is dead!
