FRAGMENT OF CHORUS OF A DEJANEIRA. FRIVOLOUS mind of man, Light ignorance, and hurrying, unsure thoughts, Though man bewails you not, How I bewail you! Little in your prosperity Do you seek counsel of the Gods. Proud, ignorant, self-adored, you live alone. In profound silence stern Among their savage gorges and cold springs The great oracular shrines. Thither in your adversity Do you betake yourselves for light, But strangely misinterpret all you hear. New hearts with the inquirer's holy robe, And him on whom, at the end Of toil and dolor untold, The Gods have said that repose At last shall descend undisturbed, In an easy old age, in a happy home; No end but this you praise. But him, on whom, in the prime Of the city of death have forever closed, PALLADIUM. ET where the upper streams of Simois flow SE Was the Palladium, high 'mid rock and wood; And Hector was in Ilium, far below, And fought, and saw it not, but there it stood. It stood; and sun and moonshine rained their light Backward and forward rolled the waves of fight Round Troy; but while this stood, Troy could not fall. So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul. Then we shall rust in shade, or shine in strife, And fluctuate 'twixt blind hopes and blind despairs, And fancy that we put forth all our life, And never know how with the soul it fares. Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high, And while it lasts, we cannot wholly end. W HUMAN LIFE. HAT mortal, when he saw, Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend, Ah! let us make no claim On life's incognizable sea To too exact a steering of our way! Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim If some fair coast has lured us to make stay, Ay, we would each fain drive At random, and not steer by rule! Weakness! and worse, weakness bestowed in vain! Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive, We rush by coasts where we had lief remain; Man cannot, though he would, live chance's fool. |