'Tis little wonder truly; things go on
And at their worst they end or mend—'t is time
To look about, with matters at this pass:
Have I insensibly sunk as deep—has all
Been undergone for this? this the request
My labour qualified me to present
With no fear of refusal? Had I gone
Slightingly through my task, and therefore judged It fit to moderate my hopes; nay, were it
My sole concern to exculpate myself—
To flounder through the scrape—I could not chuse
An humbler mood to wait for the event!
No, no, there needs not this; no, after all,
At worst I have perform'd 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 so far the temple-courts unscathed,
That he descries at length the shrine of shrines,
Must let no sneering of the demon's eyes,
Which he could pass unquailing, fasten now
Upon him, fairly past their power; no, no,
He must not stagger and fall down at last,
Having 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, if he wake up,
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 purpose
Whereto I ordain'd it; there alone I spy
No doubt; that 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 my nature freely up, in truth,
But in its actual state—consenting fully
All passionate impulses its soil was form'd
To rear, should wither; but foreseeing not
The tract doom'd to perpetual barrenness
Would seem one day, remember'd as it was
Beside the parch'd 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,
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 its claims aside;
This heart was human once, or why recall
Einsiedeln, even now, and Würzburg, whom the Marne
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 ?
With the sweet maiden, long ago his bride?
I surely loved them—that last night, at least,
gone! gone! the better: I am saved
When we ...
The sad review of an ambitious youth,
Choked by vile lusts, unnoticed in their birth,
Which have grown up and wound around a will
Till action was destroy'd. No, I have gone
Purging my path successively of aught
Wearing the distant likeness of such loves.
I have made life consist of one idea:
E're that was master—up 'till that was born
I bear a memory of a pleasant life
Whose small events I can recall, even to
The morn I ran over the grassy fields
Startling the flocks of nameless birds, to tell
Poor Festus, leaping all the while for joy,
To leave all trouble for my future plans,
For I had just determin'd to become
The greatest and most glorious being on earth.
But since that hour all life has been forgotten.
'Tis as one day—one only step between
The outset and the end: one tyrant all-
Absorbing aim fills up the interval—
One vast unbroken chain of thought, kept up
Throughout a course apparently adverse
To its existence: life, death, light, and shadow,
The shows of the world, were bare receptacles
Or indices of truth to be wrung thence,
Not ministers of sorrow or delight—
A wondrous natural robe in which I went :
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— Yet all was then o'erlook'd, though noted now. 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.
I sicken on a dead gulf, streak'd with light
From its own putrifying depths alone!
Then—God was pledged to take me by the hand;
Now any miserable juggle can bid
My pride depart. All is alike at length:
God may take pleasure in confounding us,
By hiding secrets in the scorn'd and base . . .
I am here, in short: so little have I paused
Throughout. I never glanced behind to know
If I had kept my primal light from wane,
And thus insensibly am—what I am
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