To Haydon

Haydon! forgive me that I cannot speak
Definitively of these mighty things;
Forgive me, that I have not Eagle’s wings⁠—
That what I want I know not where to seek:
And think that I would not be over meek,
In rolling out upfollow’d thunderings,
Even to the steep of Heliconian springs,
Were I of ample strength for such a freak⁠—
Think too, that all those numbers should be thine;
Whose else? In this who touch thy vesture’s hem?
For when men star’d at what was most divine
With browless idiotism⁠—o’erwise phlegm⁠—
Thou hadst beheld the Hesperean shine
Of their star in the East, and gone to worship them.