Imagination
Blest Being from some happier sphere
O bend thy luminous footsteps near
Were Heaven’s gates ajar,
When down a moonlit path you came
With dazzling smile and wings of flame
Fair as the morning star?
Imagination, radiant sprite
With crescent crown and stars bedight,
And seraph’s eyes;
O guide us up that filmy stair
By ladders raised on buoyant air
To vaulting skies!
Imagination is the singing rhyme
In life’s dull prose.
She blooms among the cruel thorns of time
A beauteous rose.
No Circe’s spell is hers, the poppy’s lure
From present pain
In drug engendered dreams; but calm and pure
Is her sweet reign.
Her finger traces in the storm cloud gray
The rainbow’s arc;
She sees within the gnarled volcanic clay
The diamond’s spark;
Forecasts the harvests in the sodded rows
The plough shares fling;
When all the world is buried neath the snows
She dreams of spring.
The cave man followed up the savage road
The torch she bore,
She marks within life’s rock encumbered lode
The glinting ore.
Imagination melts in purple mist
The jagged peaks;
And petty things yield to this alchemist
The gold she seeks.
No priestess of illusions, vague, unreal
And not of earth,
She rather helps us know and see and feel
A thing’s true worth.
Along the wistful trail of yesterdays
Backward sad Memory directs her gaze
And points her withered hand.
“Tomorrow” is the magic word that cheers
Imagination onward through the years
Where lies her promised land.
Imagination only can explain
Those jewelled etchings on our window pane
By fairies of the frost;
From icy peaks and breaker fretted seas
To elven glens beneath snow laden trees
So cunningly embossed.
Calm reason tells us there is nothing there
But mists congealing in the frosted air;
’Tis false, calm reason lies.
For in that witching square the eye beholds
A glittering world of wonder that unfolds
Its luminious mysteries.
Imagination plumbs the deeps of space
To roam among the stars,
She gilds the workshop, lights the market place,
And sunders prison bars.
Her inspiration made Da Vinci thrill
And o’er his canvas shone,
And Michelangelo’s god like visions still
Endure in living stone.
Beyond the sunset’s molten lava flood
Lie mysteries yet untold -
Imagination sails those seas of blood
And mounts those walls of gold.
Her finger laid on blind old Milton’s eyes
Kindled no earthly glow -
And deaf Beethoven thrilled to melodies
No mortal ear may know.
Imagination decks the naked tree
With candles burning clear,
Until transfigured by her witchery
It blooms with Christmas cheer.
Life’s pathway leads us to the yawning tomb
And there it seems to end -
Imagination peering through the gloom
Sees visions that transcend.
Imagination marked the goal
That fired Columbus’ burning soul,
Till like a vision through the haze
A new world burst upon his gaze
That voyage of destiny.
And ancient chroniclers relate
Magellan, groping through the strait,
Beyond the blue horizon’s rim
Saw far off islands beckon him
Out to an unknown sea!
“Imagination rules the world” so said
The great Napoleon, and at the head
Of conquering armies drove his ruthless way
Made Afric sands and Russian snows obey
His iron decrees. Upon an Alpine height
Poised like an eagle, terrible as night,
He swooped on Italy. His boundless reign
Was the creation of his lonely brain.
On upstart thrones he set his underlings.
Like puppets played with kingdoms and with kings -
His fingers marked their bounds, his will their power
Earth’s dictator, in that tremendous hour
He dreamed like Lucifer, as grandly wove
His dreams into realty, then strove
For Godlike heights, and from those heights was hurled
And in his meteor fall amazed the world!
The naked truth itself is never true.
Stern facts are but the skeleton that binds
Our living fancies. If we seek to view
Truth absolute, her grisly horror blinds
Our eyes, for her’s is but the mocking skull,
Stark, hideous, the poor grain’s withered hull
After the kernel dies. The glance, the smile,
Expression, character, the soul beguile
When, taking form o’er Truth’s repellent base
Imagination beams with radiant face.
Imagination is the martial strain
That fires disheartened soldiers for the fray;
Her pitying fingers smooth the brow of pain,
She whispers low, - “This too, shall pass away.”
Her’s is the vision, the all seeing eye
That pierces where truth’s nuggets lie concealed.
Illusions crumble at her query, “Why?”
The Sphinx’s ancient wisdom is revealed
To her clear sight. She holds the golden key
That can unlock the guarded door of fate.
She is the lodestar of our destiny,
Her’s is the Godlike impulse to create.
The treasure that Prometheus once stole
From Heaven’s high altar is her sacred fire;
To the insensate clod she is the soul,
The Phoenix risen from the funeral pyre!
The atoms spin, the elements adhere
Till matter forms like mold: and vaunted life
A fungus growth upon a dying sphere
Whirls on into the dark. “The futile strife
“Of some vast mechanism’s grinding gears.” -
Grim science tells us - but the vision comes
Of life immortal ranging down the years
Through endless vistas of milleniums!