The Mystic Lyre
HEAVEN-GIFTED was the mortal, thrice-illum’ed by heaven’s own fire,
A bard the chords of whose great soul to love and truth were strung,
Who deemed the mighty universe itself a seven-stringed lyre
From which at the Creator’s touch the anthem, Life, is wrung.
An instrument it is by which a gamut vast is spann’d,
Whose every tone’s in unison with every other tone;
And which alone is given to the heart to understand
Who to pity gives an ear of soul—to self an ear of stone.
To such a one the accents of that magic lyre expound
The kinship of all beings great and small, and how the sweet
Yet mighty octave to the key struck in yon planet’s found
Within the little dew-drop that sparkles at our feet.
In the seeming great the little, in the seeming small the great,
Are rendered by that music to the pure in spirit, plain;
And the thistle’s and the lily’s and the mourn’d and envied state
Are but altos and contraltos in one bright harmonic strain.
In the seeming ill the good is, in the seeming good the ill;
But in Life’s complex measure what the ill deplored appears,
Is often but a needful step into a varied trill
That terminates with rapture what began mid doubts and fears.
All height and depth of moral being are compass’d in one chant,
And thro’ vast scales descending in the lowest soul is heard
True echoes, true, tho’ faint, of what the highest soul can vaunt,
Whilst to the lowest full as oft the highest yields a chord.
The measure of the man with all his destiny so vast,
When the key-note of the living known is stricken may be shown;
And the burden of the future and the burden of the past,
Are but coloured octaves to the note from out the present thrown.
The measure of the angel in the measure of the man,
Yea, he the highest seraph in the lowest serf’s concealed;
And the diapason struck on earth compriseth in its span,
An echo of the heaven itself in angel-states reveal’d.
Not that which was, is that which is, as sang the Hebrew sage,
But a duller to a brighter chord; and that which is, in turn,
Is but a stage in life’s great march prophetic of a stage
That awaits the soul’s arrival when we leap death’s dreaded burn.
The mighty universe itself is but a mighty lyre,
From which at the Creator’s touch the anthem, Life, is flung;
And could we heed its music, up would leap our souls on fire,
And up a hymn to Love Eterne would leap from every tongue!
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