Talent And Genius

I. ON the high road travelling steady, Sure, alert, and ever ready, Prompt to seize all fit occasion, Courting power and wealth and station; One clear aim before him keeping With a vigilance unsleeping; Prizing most the ephemeral flower Blooming for a brilliant hour; With self-conscious action moving; Well known truths intent on proving; Radiant in his day and season With the world's reflected reason; Noting times, effects, and causes, Phaon wins the crowd's applauses. II. Wing'd like an eagle o'er mountains and meadows, Lit by their splendors or hid by their shadows; Borne by a power supernal, resistless; Dreaming through trances abstracted and listless; Swooping capricious to faults and to errors, Redeemed by a virtue unconscious of terrors; Linking with ease his result and endeavor; Opening through chaos fresh pathways forever; Gilding the world with his thoughts and his fancies; Scornful of fashions and heedless of chances; Yet in obscurity living and dying — Hylas, a voice in the wilderness crying, Only is heard when no hand can restore him, Only is known when the grave closes o'er him.