-- How great it is! I can finish never.
Great thoughts that in life and legend we treasure
Stream towards the scene in persistent endeavor,
The mighty impression to grasp and measure,--
Dame's hell, India's myth-panorama,
Shakespeare's earth-overarching drama,
Aeschylus' thunders that purge and free,
Beethoven's powerful symphony,--
They widen and heighten, they cloud and brighten
--Like small ants scrambling and soft-cooing doves,
They tumble backward and flee affrighted;--
As if a dandy in dress-coat and gloves
The mountains approached and to dance invited.
No, tempt them not! Their retainer be!
You'll learn then later,
How life with the great must make you greater.
If you are humble, they'll say it themselves,
That something is greater than e'en their greatest.
Look how the little river that delves
High in the notch within limits straitest,
Through ice first burrowed and stone, a brook,
Slowly the giants asunder wearing!
Unmoved before, their face now and bearing
They had to change 'mid the spring-flood's laughter;
Millions of years have followed thereafter,
Millions of years it also took.
In stamps the fjord now to look on their party,
Lifts his sou'-wester, gives greeting to them.
Whoever at times in their fog could view them
Has seen him near to their very noses;--
The fjord's not famed for his well-bred poses.
Towards him hurry, all white-foam-faced,
Brooks and rivers in whirling haste,
All of his family, frolicsome, naughty.
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