There still are texts for never-dying song:  100
From age to age man’s still aspiring spirit
  Finds wider scope and sees with clearer eyes,
And thou in larger measure dost inherit
  What made thy great forerunners free and wise. 
Sit thou enthroned where the Poet’s mountain
  Above the thunder lifts its silent peak,
And roll thy songs down like a gathering fountain,
  They all may drink and find the rest they seek. 
Sing! there shall silence grow in earth and heaven,
  A silence of deep awe and wondering; 110
For, listening gladly, bend the angels, even,
  To hear a mortal like an angel sing.

III

Among the toil-worn poor my soul is seeking
  For who shall bring the Maker’s name to light,
To be the voice of that almighty speaking
  Which every age demands to do it right. 
Proprieties our silken bards environ;
  He who would be the tongue of this wide land
Must string his harp with chords of sturdy iron
  And strike it with a toil-imbrowned hand; 120
One who hath dwelt with Nature well attended,
  Who hath learnt wisdom from her mystic books,
Whose soul with all her countless lives hath blended,
  So that all beauty awes us in his looks: 
Who not with body’s waste his soul hath pampered,
  Who as the clear northwestern wind is free,
Who walks with Form’s observances unhampered,
  And follows the One Will obediently;
Whose eyes, like windows on a breezy summit,
  Control a lovely prospect every way; 130
Who doth not sound God’s sea with earthly plummet,
  And find a bottom still of worthless clay;
Who heeds not how the lower gusts are working,
  Knowing that one sure wind blows on above,
And sees, beneath the foulest faces lurking,
  One God-built shrine of reverence and love;
Who sees all stars that wheel their shining marches
  Around the centre fixed of Destiny,
Where the encircling soul serene o’erarches
  The moving globe of being like a sky; 140
Who feels that God and Heaven’s great deeps are nearer
  Him to whose heart his fellow-man is nigh,
Who doth not hold his soul’s own freedom dearer
  Than that of all his brethren, low or high;
Who to the Right can feel himself the truer
  For being gently patient with the wrong,
Who sees a brother in the evildoer,
  And finds in Love the heart’s-blood of his song;—­
This, this is he for whom the world is waiting
  To sing the beatings of its mighty heart, 150
Too long hath it been patient with the grating
  Of scrannel-pipes, and heard it misnamed Art. 
To him the smiling soul of man shall listen,
  Laying awhile its crown of thorns aside,
And once again in every eye shall glisten
  The glory of a nature satisfied. 
His verse shall have a great commanding motion,
  Heaving and swelling with a melody