The Seeker

Whilome in the Ages’ flight
     Since Earth was something old,
There lived a soulless Mammonite,
     Who would buy a Soul with Gold.
He heard that once in time
     There were Poets in the earth,
Who, stirred by Nature, gave sublime
     And great Ideas birth,—
And straightway he would go,
     New-fired by the thought of that,
Where the wines of Inspiration flow
     From Nature’s foaming vat.
And he rode with horse and groom
     As if on a fox’s track;
And he thought how great he would become
     When he came in triumph back.

He stood on the jagged cliff
     That loomed o’er the boiling sea,
And saw, like a bubble, the bounding skiff
     Todd’s round by the tempest’s glee;
And he heard, like the thunder’s shock,
     The crash of a gallant bark
Borne down by the storm on the hungry rock
     And whelmed in waters dark.
But while the billows roll’d
     Like mountains of liquid fire,
His Soul but dwelt on the buried gold,
     With a Mizer’s mean desire.

He trod the western plains,
     Where the Bson herds swept by,
And shook, like an earthquake, the vast champaigns
     That stretched from sky to sky;
And he saw the world of flame
     That span’d the horizon’s verge,
As on, like an army with banners, it came,
     —Like the rush of the foaming surge—
But his thoughts were away at the mart—
     As he scan’d the herd and plain;
Not a nobler pulse thrill’d his sluggish heart,
     Or stirred his maudlin brain.

He stood on the precipice
     Where the floods of half a world
Went howling down to the startled abyss
     From Niagara’s forehead hurl’d;
Up came the eternal cloud—
     The smoke of tormented waves
While the groans of their multitude thundered loud
     From the grinding Torturer’s caves.
But read his idiot stare,
     As the rocks the wild flood slaughter
He sees not the Infinite even there
     In that storm-way of the water!

He sought the Italian sky,
     With its everlasting blue,
Where sure the soul of Poesy
     Like the stars would glimmer through;
And the old world came agen
     With the flash of sword and song,
Till the very marbles seemed the men
     They’ve deified so long:
And through their hallowed halls
     With a patron’s air he trod,
Where Art looks down from the dim old walls.
     Great and sad as a throneless God.
And long in his heart he mused
     Why they made their Dolls of stone,
And his better sense was shocked
     For they had no chemise on!
And the sky—why, that was blue—
     And the earth, like him, was green
And the roofs of their churches had fallen through,
     ‘Twas shocking to be seen!

He hunted long and late
     For the life that was in things,
Saw all that little Souls call great,
     But he never found his wings..
He spurned the living Seer
     In seeking the grave of the dead;
And when that said, “He is not here”—
     To another grave he sped—
He found that all he might follow
     Was empty earth to him,
But not that his own heart was so hollow,
     And he eye that was so dim.

Then back he turned to his home,
     Bemoaning the soulless times—
It was stupid there, it was worse to roam—
     By the difference of his dimes.
He returned to fatten, and sigh
     That Poesy was gone,—
He returned to eat and sleep, and die
     The FOOL that he was born.