Save in blind eagle-fury and full flight,
Pythian against the light,
Writing in all the sea, the trees, the flowers,
The many-fruited bowers,
The lustred lilies and arboreal scent
And fresh young element
Of blood in every osseous vein of time,
New senses more sublime!
Should it not be that the ill days are past
And my soul lost at last,
Lost in thy bosom who art mother of all
Ere the first was, to fall
After the end. And then, O soul endued
(In this my solitude)
With all the thousand elements of life,
Shall I not call thee wife ?
O Muse long wooed!
Long called to in the forest, on the mountain,
Reached after in the fountain,
Grasped in the slumberous sea,
And yet, ever, aye, ever! escaping me!
But here where the wise pen
And silver cadences outrunning song,
And clear sweet clean-chiselled English, sharp and strong
Of the one man among the latter men
Who lived with Nature, saw her face to face,
And died not: here in this consummate place,
Immortal now, though the Antarctic sent
Its mightiest coldest wave and rose and rent
98