The Buried Life

Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,     Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!     I feel a nameless sadness oer me roll.     Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,     We know, we know that we can smile!         But theres a something in this breast,     To which thy light words bring no rest,     And thy gay smiles no anodyne;     Give me thy hand, and hush awhile,     And turn those limpid eyes on mine,         And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul.          Alas! is even love too weak     To unlock the heart, and let it speak?     Are even lovers powerless to reveal     To one another what indeed they feel?             I knew the mass of men conceald     Their thoughts, for fear that if reveald     They would by other men be met     With blank indifference, or with blame reprovd;     I knew they livd and movd             Trickd in disguises, alien to the rest     Of men, and alien to themselves and yet     The same heart beats in every human breast!          But we, my love! doth a like spell benumb     Our hearts, our voices? must we too be dumb?              Ah! well for us, if even we,     Even for a moment, can get free     Our heart, and have our lips unchaind;     For that which seals them hath been deep-ordaind!          Fate, which foresaw     How frivolous a baby man would be     By what distractions he would be possessd,     How he would pour himself in every strife,     And well-nigh change his own identity     That it might keep from his capricious play     His genuine self, and force him to obey     Even in his own despite his beings law,     Bade through the deep recesses of our breast     The unregarded river of our life     Pursue with indiscernible flow its way;     And that we should not see     The buried stream, and seem to be     Eddying at large in blind uncertainty,     Though driving on with it eternally.          But often, in the worlds most crowded streets,         But often, in the din of strife,     There rises an unspeakable desire     After the knowledge of our buried life;     A thirst to spend our fire and restless force     In tracking out our true, original course;         A longing to inquire     Into the mystery of this heart which beats     So wild, so deep in us to know     Whence our lives come and where they go.          And many a man in his own breast then delves,         But deep enough, alas! none ever mines.     And we have been on many thousand lines,     And we have shown, on each, spirit and power;     But hardly have we, for one little hour,     Been on our own line, have we been ourselves             Hardly had skill to utter one of all     The nameless feelings that course through our breast,     But they course on for ever unexpressd.     And long we try in vain to speak and act     Our hidden self, and what we say and do             Is eloquent, is well but t is not true!     And then we will no more be rackd     With inward striving, and demand     Of all the thousand nothings of the hour     Their stupefying power;         Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call!     Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,     From the souls subterranean depth upborne     As from an infinitely distant land,     Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey             A melancholy into all our day.          Only but this is rare     When a beloved hand is laid in ours,     When, jaded with the rush and glare     Of the interminable hours,                 Our eyes can in anothers eyes read clear,     When our world-deafend ear     Is by the tones of a lovd voice caressd     A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,     And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.             The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,     And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.     A man becomes aware of his lifes flow,     And hears its winding murmur, and he sees     The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.      And there arrives a lull in the hot race     Wherein he doth for ever chase     The flying and elusive shadow, rest.     An air of coolness plays upon his face,     And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. And then he thinks he knows     The hills where his life rose,     And the sea where it goes.