anguish

Give little Anguish –
Lives will fret –
Give Avalanches –
And they’ll slant –
Straighten — look cautious for their Breath –
But make no syllable — like Death –
Who only shows the Marble Disc –
Sublimer sort — than Speech –

Where Ships of Purple — gently toss –
On Seas of Daffodil –
Fantastic Sailors — mingle –
And then — the Wharf is still!

A Weight with Needles on the pounds –
To push, and pierce, besides –
That if the Flesh resist the Heft –
The puncture — coolly tries –

That not a pore be overlooked
Of all this Compound Frame –
As manifold for Anguish –
As Species — be — for name –

I have never seen “Volcanoes” –
But, when Travellers tell
How those old — phlegmatic mountains
Usually so still –

Bear within — appalling Ordnance,
Fire, and smoke, and gun,
Taking Villages for breakfast,
And appalling Men –

If the stillness is Volcanic
In the human face
When upon a pain Titanic
Features keep their place –

If at length the smouldering anguish
Will not overcome –
And the palpitating Vineyard
In the dust, be thrown?

If some loving Antiquary,
On Resumption Morn,
Will not cry with joy “Pompeii”!
To the Hills return!

To learn the Transport by the Pain
As Blind Men learn the sun!
To die of thirst — suspecting
That Brooks in Meadows run!

To stay the homesick — homesick feet
Upon a foreign shore –
Haunted by native lands, the while –
And blue — beloved air!

This is the Sovereign Anguish!
This — the signal woe!
These are the patient “Laureates”
Whose voices — trained — below –

Ascend in ceaseless Carol –
Inaudible, indeed,
To us — the duller scholars
Of the Mysterious Bard!