and his monthly tale,
     His weekly axiom and his daily phrase,
     I felt them coming in the laden air,
     And watched them laboring up to vocal breath,
     Even as the first-born at his father’s board
     Knows ere he speaks the too familiar jest
     Is on its way, by some mysterious sign
     Forewarned, the click before the striking bell.

     He shrivelled as I spread my growing leaves,
     Till trust and reverence changed to pitying care;
     He lived for me in what he once had been,
     But I for him, a shadow, a defence,
     The guardian of his fame, his guide, his staff,
     Leaned on so long he fell if left alone. 
     I was his eye, his ear, his cunning hand,
     Love was my spur and longing after fame,
     But his the goading thorn of sleepless age
     That sees its shortening span, its lengthening shades,
     That clutches what it may with eager grasp,
     And drops at last with empty, outstretched hands.

     All this he dreamed not.  He would sit him down
     Thinking to work his problems as of old,
     And find the star he thought so plain a blur,
     The columned figures labyrinthine wilds
     Without my comment, blind and senseless scrawls
     That vexed him with their riddles; he would strive
     And struggle for a while, and then his eye
     Would lose its light, and over all his mind
     The cold gray mist would settle; and erelong
     The darkness fell, and I was left alone.

     Alone! no climber of an Alpine cliff,
     No Arctic venturer on the waveless sea,
     Feels the dread stillness round him as it chills
     The heart of him who leaves the slumbering earth
     To watch the silent worlds that crowd the sky.

     Alone!  And as the shepherd leaves his flock
     To feed upon the hillside, he meanwhile
     Finds converse in the warblings of the pipe
     Himself has fashioned for his vacant hour,
     So have I grown companion to myself,
     And to the wandering spirits of the air
     That smile and whisper round us in our dreams. 
     Thus have I learned to search if I may know
     The whence and why of all beneath the stars
     And all beyond them, and to weigh my life
     As in a balance, poising good and ill
     Against each other,-asking of the Power
     That flung me forth among the whirling worlds,
     If I am heir to any inborn right,
     Or only as an atom of the dust
     That every wind may blow where’er it will.

     I am not humble; I was shown my place,
     Clad in such robes as Nature had at hand;
     Took what she gave, not chose; I know no shame,
     No fear for being simply what I am. 
     I am not proud, I hold my every breath
     At Nature’s mercy.  I am as a babe
     Borne in a giant’s