The Nevada Democrat. [volume] (Nevada, Calif.) 1854-1863, 1860-06-27
PYTHAGORAS.

Above the petty passions Of the crowd
stand in frozen marble like god,
Inviolats, and ancient as the moon.
The thing am, and not the thing Man Is,
Fills these blank sockets Let him moan and de-
For he is dust that shall be laid again;
know my creation divine.
Strewn on the breezy continents see
The veined shells and glstening sc-les which once
Enwrapt my being ,--husks that had their use;
brood on all the shapes must attain
Before reach the Perfect which Is Cod,
And dream my dream, and let the rabble go;
For am Of the mountains and the sea,
The deserts, and the caverns In the earth,
The catacombs and fragments OF old worlds.
was q spirit on the mountain-tops,-
A perfume In the Valleys simeon
On arid deserts,--a nonadic wind
Roaming the universe,-a treless Voice.
was ele Romulus and Remus were;
was ere Nineveh and Babylon;
] was, and am, and ever more shall be-
Progressing reaching to the end.
Gbundred years trembled in the grass,
The delicate trefo that mufiod warm
slope on Ida for hundred years
Moved In the purple eyre Of those dark flowers
The Grecian women strew upon the dead
Under the earth, In fragrant gooms, dwelt;
Then in the veins and sinews of pine
On lone isle, where, from the Cyclades,
A mighty wind, like leyiathan,
Ploughed through the Brine and from those solitudss
Sent Silence, frightened. To and FRO swayed,
Drawing the sunshine from the STOPPING clouds.
Suns came and ent,-and many mystic moon,
0rbing and wanDg,-and fierce meteor
Leaving its lurid ghost 10 haunt the night.
heard loud voices by the sounding shore,
The stormy sea-gods,-aDd from ivory conehs
Wild music; and strange shadows hoated by.
Some moaning and some singing. 80 the years
Clustered about me- till the hand Of God
Let down the lightning from sultry sky,
spllntered the pine and split the iron rock
And from my odorous prison house bird
I In its bosom, darted we fed,
Turning the brittle edge Of one high wave
Island and tree and gods left behind
Free the air, from zone 20 zone few,
Far from the tumult to the quiet gates
or aybresk; and beneath me beheld
VINEYARDS, and rivers that ike silver threads
Ran through the green and gold Of pasturelands,-
And here and there hamlet, white rose
And here and there city, whose slim spires
Aud palace roofs and swollen domes uprose
Like scintillant staagmites In the sun;
| saw huge navies battling with storm
BY ragged reefs along the desolate COASTS
And lazy merchantmen, that orawlsd, like Dies
Over the blue enamel OF the sea
To India or the icy Labradors.
A century q single day.
What Is q century TO an immortal soulf
A breath,-no more And yet hold one hour
Beyond all rice,--that hour when from the heavens
! circed and TO the earth,
Nearer and nearer, till brushed my wings
Against the pointed chestnuts, where stream
That foamed and chartered over pebbly shoals
Fled through the bryony, and with shout
Leaped headlong down precipice and there,
Gathering wild flowers in the cool ravine,
Wandered woman divinely shaped
Than any OF the creatures oil the air,
Or river goddesses or restless hade'
or noble matrons marvellous In their time
For beauty and great suffering and sung,
Down from the sunny atmosphere stole
And nestled In her bosom. There slept
From moon In moon, while In hor eyes thought
Grew sweet and sweeter deepening like the dawn,
A mystical forewarnng When the stream,
Breaking through leaaess brambes and dead leaves,
Piped ahriller treble, and from chestnut boughs
The fruit dropped noseless throgh the autumn night
gave quick low cry, as infants do
We weep when we are born not when we dio
SO II destined; and thus came here
To walk the earth and the form Of man,
To suffer bravey as becomes my state
One step, grade, one cycle nearer God.
And kn, wing these things, can stoop to fret
And lie and haggle in the market place,
Give dross for dross, every thing for noughtf
No let me sit above the crowd, and sing,
Waiting with hope tor that mir culous change
Which seems like sleep; and though waiting starVe,
| cannot kiss the idols that set
BY every gate and every street and park
cannot fawn cannot soil my soul
For am Of the mountains and the sea,
The deserts and the cRyerns Of the earth,
The catacombs and fragments Of old worlds.
Atlantic Monthly.