TO FAME.
In the seclusion of my solitude,
Thy echo reached me, and awoke a brood
Of slumbering fancies into life and light;
A spell seemed thrown around me, and my mind
Was full of unfixed images; the bright
And ready impulses of thought, confined
And struggling to be free; a light had dawned
Across my path, as if by Heaven's command.
A lofty and immeasurable longing
Sprung up within my breast, beyond control,
A throbbing multitude of fancies thronging
Strove to o'ermaster and o'ermatch the whole:
Creation rose from chaos, as at first,
A water in the wilderness to quench my thirst.
The complicated elements of Mind,
No longer dim, confused, and undefined,
Rolled into order, and the springs of thought
Became then less obscure, and less remote.
My mind, not yet in union with its thoughts,
Seemed sad and solitary; o'er it swept
A calmness like the soft sun-breeze that floats
Above the wave, that light and languid leapt:
Then high imaginations, restless, past
Into being—various, vivid, vast—
And thought, admixing with the mind's emotion,
Assumed a depth and fervour of devotion,
The semblance and the hope, if not the true
Sole inspiration of poetic lore;
Then truth, at times, like light, came struggling through,
And I was sad and heart-forgone no more.
For thou became my mistress—I have thrown
My heart and hope on thee—I cannot bear
That, with my life, my name should pass away,
And be forgot, when I am dead and gone;
And in the grave, when mouldering in decay,
That my remembrance should be buried there.
I care not for the world, or the world's ways,
I scorn alike its censure and its praise;
But from the mental few, by heaven designed
To rate and recognise a kindred mind,
A sure approval I will strive to gain,
For this is fame indeed,—all other is but vain.