A living soul came into the world—
Whence came it? Who can tell?
Or where that soul went forth again,
When it bade the world farewell?
A body it had, this spirit new,
And the body was given a name,
And chance and change and circumstance
About its being came.
Whether the name would suit the soul
The givers never knew—
Names are alike, but never souls:
So body and spirit grew,
Till time enlarged their narrow sphere
Into the realms of life,
Into this strange and double world,
Whose elements are at strife.
‘Twere easy to tell the daily paths
Walked by the body’s feet,
To mark where the sharpest stones were laid,
Or where the grass grew sweet;
To tell if it hungered, or what its dress,
Ragged, or plain, or rare ;
What was its forehead—what its voice,
Or the hue of its eyes and hair.
But these are all in the common dust;
And the spirit—where is it?
Will any say if the hue of the eyes,
Or the dress, for that was fit?
Will any one say what daily paths
That spirit went or came—
Whether it rested in beds of flowers,
Or shrunk upon beds of flame?
Can any one tell, upon stormy nights,
When the body was safely at home,
Where, amid darkness, terror, and gloom.
Its friend was wont to roam?
Where, upon hills beneath the blue skies.
It rested soft and still,
Flying straight out of its half-closed eyes.
That friend went wandering at will?
High as the bliss of the highest heaven.
Low as the lowest hell.
With hope and fear it winged its way
On journeys none may tell.
It lay on the rose’s fragrant breast,
It bathed in the ocean deep,
It sailed in a ship of sunset cloud.
And it heard the rain-cloud weep.
It laughed with naiads in murmurous caves.
It was struck by the lightning’s flash.
It drank from the moonlit lily-cup.
It heard the iceberg’s crash.
It haunted places of old renown.
It basked in thickets of flowers;
It fled on the wings of the stormy wind.
It dreamed through the star-lit hours,
Alas! a soul’s strange history
Never was written or known,
Though the name and age of its earthly part
Be graven upon the stone!
It hated, and overcame its hate—
It loved to youth’s excess—
It was mad with anguish, wild with joy.
It had visions to grieve and to bless;
It drank of the honey-dew of dreams,
For it was a poet true;
Secrets of nature and secrets of mind,
Mysteriously it knew.
Should mortals question its history.
They would ask if it had gold—
If it bathed and floated in deeps of wealth—
If it traded, and bought, and sold.
They would prize its worth by the outward dress
By which its body was known:
As if a soul must eat and sleep.
And live on money alone!
It had no need to purchase lands.
For it owned the whole broad earth;
‘Twas of royal rank, for all the past
Was its by right of birth.
All beauty in the world below
Was its by right of love.
And it had a great inheritance
In the nameless realms above.
It has gone! the soul so little known—
Its body has lived and died—
Gone from the world so vexing, small:
But the Universe is wide!
From: Coggeshall, William T. (ed.), Poets and Poetry of the West. The Poets and Poetry of the West: with Biographical and Critical Notes, 1860, Follett, Foster and Company: Columbus, pp. 520-521.
(https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Poets_and_Poetry_of_the_West:_With_Biographical_and_Critical_Notices)
Date: 1860
By: Metta Victoria Fuller Victor (1831-1885)
From Troubles of The World 
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