Poems (Hooper)/My Destiny

by Lucy Hamilton Hooper

MY DESTINY.

    With yearning heart I wait
    Without the golden gate
That leads into the realms of Poesy
    Wide lie the lands and fair
    Beneath th' enchanted air:
Alas! there is no entrance there for me.

    Not at my touch unfold
    The mystic gates of gold,
Yet through their jeweled bars strange splendors glow:
    Without are care and strife;
    Within, the fairer life,
And bay-crowned forms pass singing as they go.

    Some sing, and Joy appears
    More glad for what she hears;
From others' song Grief learns a sadder moan.
    Some go in strange rapt guise
    With gaze that seeks the skies;
Some seek the crowd, and others sit alone.

    O wondrous realm and fair!
    There Dante dwells, and there
Goethe and Schiller wander hand in hand;
    There Milton's sightless eyes:
    Unsealed behold the skies—
There Shakspeare reign the monarch of the land.

    There exiled Hugo's heart
    Forgets in song its smart,
And shapes new glories from its endless pain;
    There Longfellow's pure line
    Learns cadences divine,
And fair dead Browning lives and sings again.

    But I—in vain I knock,
    I cannot ope the lock;
Hopeless I stand and hopelessly I wait:
    Yet many ne'er behold
    That mystic gate of gold;
How blest am I to stand without the gate!

    Although I ne'er may win
    The right to enter in
To thy bright kingdom, Immortality!
    Yet to my raptured eyes
    Are giv'n its shining skies,
The light, the loveliness of Poesy.

    To me, to me belong
    The singers and the song,
The wondrous visions from the fair Past sent;
    And though I ne'er may stand
    Within th' enchanted land,
Mine eyes behold it, and I am content.