The Spirit Of The Age

As 't were itself a life,
That hath its being in my own--
A thing of fear and strife;
It never leaves me! it hath stamped
Itself upon my brow--
'I would almost be bereavement, for
That Thought to leave me now.
The Magi's page--the mystic arts
Or men who've sought to tell
Our strange and hidden destiny,
By star and crucible--
The thoughts of those who've struggled with
The dark and the unknown,
Who've watched the secret springs of life,
For years I've made my own.
I've stood upon the Apennines,
Where famed Lepanto swells,
And where Marmora heaves her heart
Along the Dardanelles;
Where, round her stern and ice-bound capes
The freezing Arctic sweeps;
Where, still above her perished bride
The Adriatic weeps;
Amid her ruins, who was once,
The mistress of the world;
Where, for the Banner of the Cross,
The battle-axe was hurled;
Upon that hallowed mount, where erst.
The God of Abraham spoke.
And on the hill where fabled Jove
His wrathful thunders broke;
On Asia's sands, where Silence rules
With unmolested reign;
Beneath the Moslem's minaret;
Beside the Pagan fane;
Where scarce the air that breathes upon
The Isles of Greece is free-
But, like a Presence, was that Thought,
Forever unto me!
It haunts me in the forest shade;
It haunts me where the roar
Of rushing multitudes is like
The sea upon the shore;
It haunts me in the blaze of day,
And when, on Ida's steeps,
Her watch above her lover-boy,
The fabled Huntress keeps.
I cannot flee it! when a boy
It came into my brain;
And scarce, but that, a memory now
Of childhood doth remain:
All else of life hath been to feed
That vampire on my heart-
'T will never leave me! never: no,
It never will depart!