""Tis the mere echo of time; and he whose heart "Beat first beneath a human heart, whose speech
"Was copied from a human tongue, can never
Recall when he was living yet knew not this.
Nevertheless long seasons come and go,
"Till some one hour's experience shows what nought, "He deemed, could clearer show; and ever after "An altered brow, and eye, and gait, and speech "Attest that now he knows the adage true
Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream.'
Ay, my brave chronicler, and this same time
As well as any: let my hour speak now!
Now! I can go no farther; well or ill—
"Tis done. I must desist and take my chance;
I cannot keep on the stretch; 'tis no back-shrinking—
For let the least assurance dawn, some end
To my toil seem possible, and I proceed.
At any price, by any sacrifice:
Else, here I pause: the old Greek's prophecy
Is like to turn out true-"I shall not quit
"His chamber till I know what I desire!" Was it the light wind sung it, o'er the sea?
An end, a rest! strange how the notion, once Admitted, gains strength every moment! Rest! Where kept that thought so long? this throbbing brow To cease- this beating heart to cease-its crowd
Of gnawing thoughts to cease!-To dare let down
My strung, so high-strung brain-to dare unnerve
My harassed o'ertasked frame-to know my place,
-My portion, my reward, my failure even,
Assigned, made sure for ever!-To lose myself
Among the common creatures of the world-
To draw some gain from having been a man-
Neither to hope nor fear to live at length!
Oh, were it but in failure, to have rest!
What, sunk insensibly so deep? Has all
Been undergone for this? Was this the prayer
My labour qualified me to present
With no fear of refusal? Had I gone
Carelessly through my task, and so judged fit
To moderate my hopes; nay, were it now
My sole concern to exculpate myself,
And lessen punishment, I could not chuse
An humbler mood to wait for the decree!
No, no, there needs not this; no, after all,
At worst I have performed my share of the task:
The rest is God's concern-mine, merely this,
To know that I have obstinately held
By my own work. The mortal whose brave foot
Has trod, unscathed, the temple-courts so far
That he descries at length the shrine of shrines,
Must let no sneering of the demons' eyes,
Whose wrath he met unquailing, follow sly
And fasten on him, fairly past their power,
If where he stands he dares but stay; no, no-
He must not stagger, faint and fall at last,
-Knowing a charm to baffle them; behold,
He bares his front-a mortal ventures thus
Serene amid the echoes, beams, and glooms!
If he be priest henceforth, or if he wake
The god of the place to ban and blast him there,-
-Both well! What's failure or success to me?
I have subdued my life to the one end
Ordained life; there alone I cannot doubt,
That only way I may be satisfied.
Yes, well have I subdued my life! beyond
The obligation of my strictest vows,
The contemplation of my wildest bond,
Which gave, in truth, my nature freely up,
In what it should be, more than what it was-
Consenting that whatever passions slept,
Whatever impulses lay unmatured,
Should wither in the germ, but scarce foreseeing
That the soil, doomed thus to perpetual waste,
Would seem one day, remembered in its youth
Beside the parched sand-tract which now it is,
Already strewn with faint blooms, viewless then.
I ne'er engaged to root up loves so frail
I felt them not; yet now, 'tis very plain
Some soft spots had their birth in me at first-
If not love, say, like love: there was a time
When yet this wolfish hunger after knowledge
Set not remorselessly love's claims aside;
This heart was human once, or why recall
Einsiedeln, now, and Würzburg, which the Mayne Forsakes her course to fold as with an arm?
And Festus-my poor Festus, with his praise,
And counsel, and grave fears—where is he now?
Or the sweet maiden, long ago his bride?
I surely loved them-that last night, at least,
When we . gone! gone! the better: I am saved
The sad review of an ambitious youth,
Choked by vile lusts, unnoticed in their birth,
But let grow up and wind around a will
Till action was destroyed. No, I have gone
Purging my path successively of aught
Wearing the distant likeness of such lusts.
I have made life consist of one idea:
Ere that was master-up till that was born-imp
I bear a memory of a pleasant life
Whose small events I treasure; till one morn
I ran o'er the seven little grassy fields,
Startling the flocks of nameless birds, to tell
Poor Festus, leaping all the while for joy,
To leave all trouble for futurity,
Since I had just determined to become
The greatest and most glorious man on earth.
And since that morn all life has been forgot;
All is one day-one only step between
The outset and the end: one tyrant aim,
Absorbing all, fills up the interval-
One vast unbroken chain of thought, kept up
Through a career or friendly or opposed
To its existence life, death, light and shade
The shows of the world, were bare receptacles
Or indices of truth to be wrung thence,
Not instruments of sorrow or delight:
For some one truth would dimly beacon me
From mountains rough with pines, and flit and wink
O'er dazzling wastes of frozen snow, and tremble
Into assured light in some branching mine,
Where ripens, swathed in fire, the liquid gold-
And all the beauty, all the wonder fell
On either side the truth, as its mere robe;
\Men saw the robe-I saw the august form.
So far, then, I have voyaged with success,
So much is good, then, in this working sea
Which parts me from that happy strip of land-
But o'er that happy strip a sun shone, too!
And fainter gleams it as the waves grow rough,
And still more faint as the sea widens; last
I sicken on a dead gulph, streaked with light
From its own putrifying depths alone!
Then-God was pledged to take me by the hand;
Now any miserable juggler bends
My pride to him. All seems alike at length:
Who knows which are the wise and which the fools?
God may take pleasure in confounding pride
By hiding secrets with the scorned and base-
He who stoops lowest may find most-in short,
I am here; and all seems natural; I start not:
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