The Inheritance
I.
Conceive that Perfect Man, to whom we tend,
The great Inheritor, on some sheer cape
Between the morn and morn-bright main: a shape
Wherein dead racer and dead wrestler blend
In living speed and power. Dead sages send
Their wisdom’s wine, matured like juice of grape,
His heart to strengthen. Songs his lips escape
That silenced lips of long-dead singers lend.
Enough for such, such immortality!
Well-paid, the press of trampling cares! the pains
That bore the embodied joy! the home-stretch sobs!
The doers passed: their best of deed remains,
And still through many a mightier artery
To feed a larger life their life-blood throbs.
II.
But those, whose useless breath was mixed with groans?
Weak flesh, sick spirits, poor dumb dog-like eyes
That could not read the star-signs in the skies,
Now closed forever, sealed beneath their stones!
In this fair-colored scheme what line atones,—
Old hopes being calmly cancelled by the wise,—
To those that died as any dull brute dies,
And propped the Future but with bleaching bones?
O Man to be, if perfect thou indeed,
A horror thine inheritance appears,
A Titan torture-fire thy rising day!
For ancient ocean’s chant to thee must need
Be all one wail of creatures cast away,
And heaven’s own rainbow-smile a thing of tears!