George Eliot (1819-1880)
"O May I Join the Choir Invisible"
Longum illud tempus, quum non ero, magis me movet, quam hoc exigium.
-- CICERO, ad Att., xii. 18.
1O may I join the choir invisible
2Of those immortal dead who live again
3In minds made better by their presence: live
4In pulses stirred to generosity,
5In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
6For miserable aims that end with self,
7In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
8And with their mild persistence urge man's search
9To vaster issues.
9 So to live is heaven:
10To make undying music in the world,
11Breathing as beauteous order that controls
12With growing sway the growing life of man.
13So we inherit that sweet purity
14For which we struggled, failed, and agonised
15With widening retrospect that bred despair.
16Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
17A vicious parent shaming still its child
18Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved;
19Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,
20Die in the large and charitable air.
21And all our rarer, better, truer self,
22That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
23That watched to ease the burthen of the world,
24Laboriously tracing what must be,
25And what may yet be better -- saw within
26A worthier image for the sanctuary,
27And shaped it forth before the multitude
28Divinely human, raising worship so
29To higher reference more mixed with love --
30That better self shall live till human Time
31Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
32Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
33Unread for ever.
33 This is life to come,
34Which martyred men have made more glorious
35For us who strive to follow. May I reach
36That purest heaven, be to other souls
37The cup of strength in some great agony,
38Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love,
39Beget the smiles that have no cruelty --
40Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
41And in diffusion ever more intense.
42So shall I join the choir invisible
43Whose music is the gladness of the world.
Notes
1] Cicero's letter to Atticus at Rome (DXLVIII [A XII, 18]): "And the infinite time during which I shall be non-existent has more influence on me than this brief life, which yet to me seems only too long." (Translation
by
Evelyn Shuckburgh.)
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: George Eliot,
The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems (Toronto: Adam,
Stevenson, 1874): 208-10. B-12 1065 Fisher Rare Book Library
First publication date:
1874
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: 2001
Recent editing: 1:2002/10/5*1:2005/9/6*1:2005/9/7
Composition date:
1867
Rhyme: unrhyming
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