The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 the Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867

Excerpt: ... of rest That ever wrought upon the life of man, Extend your utmost strengths; and this charmed hour Fix like the centre. There is One That wakes above, whose eye no sleep can bind: He sees through doors and darkness and our thoughts. O, the dangerous siege Sin lays about us! and the tyranny He exercises when he hath expugned: Like to the horror of a winter's thunder, Mixed with a gushing storm, that suffer nothing To stir abroad on earth but their own rages, Is sin, when it hath gathered head above us. Terror of darkness! O thou king of flames! That with thy music-footed horse doth strike The clear light out of crystal, on dark earth, And hurl'st instinctive fire about the world, Wake, wake, the drowsy and enchanted night, That sleeps with dead eyes in this heavy riddle: O thou great prince of shades, where never sun Sticks his far-darted beams, whose eyes are made To shine in darkness, and see ever best Where men are blindest! open now the heart Of thy abashed oracle, that for fear Of some ill it includes would feign lie hid, And rise thou with it in thy greater light. It is hardly possible to read Chapman's serious verse without feeling that he had in him the elements of a great nature, and that he was a magnificent specimen of what is called irregular genius. And one of his poems, the dedication of his translation of the Iliad to Prince Henry, is of so noble a strain, and from so high a mood, that, while borne along with its rapture, we are tempted to place him in the first rank of poets and of men. You can feel and hear the throbs of the grand old poet's heart in such lines as these: