The Modern Poet - A Song Of Derivations

I come from nothing; but from where     Come the undying thoughts I bear?         Down, through long links of death and birth,         From the past poets of the earth.     My immortality is there.     I am like the blossom of an hour.     But long, long vanished sun and shower         Awoke my breath i' the young world's air.         I track the past back everywhere     Through seed and flower and seed and flower.     Or I am like a stream that flows     Full of the cold springs that arose         In morning lands, in distant hills;         And down the plain my channel fills     With melting of forgotten snows.     Voices, I have not heard, possessed     My own fresh songs; my thoughts are blessed         With relics of the far unknown.         And mixed with memories not my own     The sweet streams throng into my breast.     Before this life began to be,     The happy songs that wake in me         Woke long ago and far apart.         Heavily on this little heart     Presses this immortality.