In ‘In Youth I Have Known One,’ the speaker remembers a companion whose bond with nature was so deep that the earth itself seemed to commune with him in secret. This friend’s life burned with a passionate light kindled from sun and stars, yet he never grasped the force that held such power over his fervent spirit. That memory prompts the speaker to wonder about the sudden, unbidden feelings that break through daily numbness—a tear springing to the eye at a familiar sight, a moment that jolts us awake like the sound of a broken harp-string. He sees these flashes as a gift, a token of other worlds given by God to those whose intense passions might otherwise pull them away from heaven. The mood is wistful and exalted, half moonlight and wild nature, a longing mixed with awe. There’s a fragile, almost painful beauty in being so alive to something beyond the ordinary, wearing that deep feeling as a crown.
In Youth I Have Known One — Summary
How often we forget all time, when lone Admiring Nature's universal throne; Her woods--her wilds--her mountains--the intense Reply of Hers to Our intelligence!
In youth I have known one with whom the Earth In secret communing held--as he with it, In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth: Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth A passionate light such for his spirit was fit-- And yet that spirit knew--not in the hour Of its own fervor--what had o'er it power.
Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought To a ferver by the moonbeam that hangs o'er, But I will half believe that wild light fraught With more of sovereignty than ancient lore Hath ever told--or is it of a thought The unembodied essence, and no more That with a quickening spell doth o'er us pass As dew of the night-time, o'er the summer grass?
Doth o'er us pass, when, as th' expanding eye To the loved object--so the tear to the lid Will start, which lately slept in apathy? And yet it need not be--(that object) hid From us in life--but common--which doth lie Each hour before us--but then only bid With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken T' awake us--'Tis a symbol and a token--
Of what in other worlds shall be--and given In beauty by our God, to those alone Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven Drawn by their heart's passion, and that tone, That high tone of the spirit which hath striven Though not with Faith--with godliness--whose throne With desperate energy 't hath beaten down; Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.