The eager and tempestuous
Joy of the great plan's hour,
The throe of the heart that controllessly
Burns with a dream of power,
And wins it, and seizes victory
It had seemed folly to hope--
All he hath known: the infinite
Rapture after the danger,
The flight, the throne of sovereignty,
The salt bread of the stranger;
Twice 'neath the feet of the worshipers,
Twice 'neath the altar's cope.
He spoke his name; two centuries,
Armed and threatening either,
Turned unto him submissively,
As waiting fate together;
He made a silence, and arbiter
He sat between the two.
He vanished; his days in the idleness
Of his island-prison spending,
Mark of immense malignity,
And of a pity unending,
Of hatred inappeasable,
Of deathless love and true.
As on the head of the mariner,
Its weight some billow heaping,
Falls even while the castaway,
With strained sight far sweeping,
Scanneth the empty distances
For some dim sail in vain;
So over his soul the memories
Billowed and gathered ever!
How oft to tell posterity
Himself he did endeavor,
And on the pages helplessly
Fell his weary hand again.
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