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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [Begin page 629]
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Sunday, April 3, 1892
Great find tonight. The Columbus envelope spoken of in notes for March 16 does not contain old notes, but notes and one draft of
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [Begin page 630]
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a new poem, unpublished, dedicated to 1892. So far as I know the only recent formidable attempt since "Good-Bye" to write any.
The mystery of mysteries, the crude and hurried ceaseless
flame, spontaneous, bearing on itself.
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The bubble and the huge, round, concrete orb!
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A breath of Deity, as thence the bulging universe unfolding!
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The many issuing cycles from their precedent minute!
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The eras of the soul incepting in an hour,
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Haply the widest, farthest evolutions of the world and man.
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Thousands and thousands of miles hence, and now four
centuries back,
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A mortal impulse thrilling its brain cell,
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Reck'd or unreck'd, the birth can no longer be postpon'd:
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A phantom of the moment, mystic, stalking, sudden,
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Only a silent thought, yet toppling down of more than walls of
brass or stone.
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(A flutter at the darkness' edge as if old Time's and Space's
secret near revealing.)
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A thought! a definite thought works out in shape.
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Four hundred years roll on.
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The rapid cumulus—trade, navigation, war, peace, democracy,
roll on;
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The restless armies and the fleets of time following their
leader—the old camps of ages pitch'd in newer, larger areas,
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The tangl'd, long-deferr'd eclaircissement of human life and
hopes boldly begins untying,
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As here to-day up-grows the Western World.
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(An added word yet to my song, far Discoverer, as ne'er before
sent back to son of earth—
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If still thou hearest, hear me,
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Voicing as now—lands, races, arts, bravas to thee,
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O'er the long backward path to thee—one vast consensus,
north, south, east, west,
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Soul plaudits! acclamation! reverent echoes!
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One manifold, huge memory to thee! oceans and lands!
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The modern world to thee and thought of thee!)
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