The youthful poet! here his mind
Was in its boyhood nurst;
All that impatient soul enshrined
Was here developed first.
What feelings and what thoughts have grown
Amid those cloisters, deep and lone!
Life’s best, and yet its worst:
For fiery elements are they,
That mould and make such dangerous clay.
A thousand gifts the poet hath
Of beauty and delight;
He flingeth round a common path,
A glory never common sight
Would find in common hours.
And yet such visionary powers
Are kin to strife and wrath.
The very light with which they glow
But telleth of the fire below.
Such minds are like the heated earth
Of southern soils and skies;
Care calls not to laborious birth
The lavish wealth that lies
Close to the surface; some bright hour
Upsprings the fruit, unfolds the flower,
And inward wonders rise:
A thousand colours glitter round,
The golden harvest lights the ground.
But not the less there lurks below
The lava’s burning wave;
The red rose and the myrtle grow
Above a hidden grave.
The life within earth’s panting veins
Is fire, which silently remains
In each volcanic cave.
Fire that gives loveliness and breath,
But giveth, in one moment, death!
