Slowly, behind his heavy tread,

The wet flower'd grass heaves up its head. Lean'd on his gate, he gazes! tears

Are in his eyes, and in his ears

The murmur of a thousand years.
Before him he sees life unroll,

A placid and continuous whole;

That general life, which does not cease,
Whose secret is not joy, but peace;

That life, whose dumb wish is not miss'd
If birth proceeds, if things subsist;

The life of plants, and stones, and rain—
The life he craves! if not in vain

Fate gave, what chance shall not control,
His sad lucidity of soul.

You listen!--but that wandering smile,
Fausta, betrays you cold the while!
Your eyes pursue the bells of foam

Wash'd, eddying, from this bank, their home.
Those gipsies, so your thoughts I scan,

Are less, the poet more, than man;

They feel not, though they move and see!
Deeply the poet feels! but he

Breathes, when he will, immortal air,

Where Orpheus and where Homer are.
In the day's life, whose iron round
Hems us all in, he is not bound;
He escapes thence, but we abide.
Not deep the poet sees, but wide!

The world in which we live and move
Outlasts aversion, outlasts love;

Outlasts each effort, interest, hope,

Remorse, grief, joy;—and were the scope

Of these affections wider made,

Man still would see, and see dismay'd,
Beyond his passion's widest range

Far regions of eternal change.

Nay, and since death, which wipes out man, Finds him with many an unsolved plan,

With much unknown, and much untried,

Wonder not dead, and thirst not dried,

Still gazing on the ever full

Eternal mundane spectacle;

This world in which we draw our breath,

In some sense, Fausta! outlasts death.

Blame thou not therefore him, who dares Judge vain beforehand human cares; Whose natural insight can discern

What through experience others learn;
Who needs not love and power, to know
Love transient, power an unreal show;
Who treads at ease life's uncheer'd ways—
Him blame not, Fausta, rather praise!
Rather thyself for some aim pray
Nobler than this, to fill the day!

Rather, that heart, which burns in thee,
Ask, not to amuse, but to set free!

Be passionate hopes not ill resign'd
For quiet, and a fearless mind!

And though fate grudge to thee and me
The poet's rapt security,

Yet they, believe me, who await

No gifts from chance, have conquer'd fate.
They, winning room to see and hear,
And to men's business not too near,
Through clouds of individual strife
Draw homeward to the general life.
Like leaves by suns not yet uncurl'd-
To the wise, foolish; to the world,
Weak; yet not weak, I might reply,

---

Not foolish, Fausta! in His eye,
To whom each moment in its race,
Crowd as we will its neutral space,

Is but a quiet watershed

Whence, equally, the seas of life and death are fed.

Enough, we live!—and if a life,
With large results so little rife,
Though bearable, seem hardly worth
This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth;
Yet, Fausta! the mute turf we tread,
The solemn hills around us spread,
This stream which falls incessantly,
The strange-scrawl'd rocks, the lonely sky,
If I might lend their life a voice,
Seem to bear rather than rejoice.

And even could the intemperate prayer

Man iterates, while these forbear,

For movement, for an ampler sphere,
Pierce Fate's impenetrable ear;

Not milder is the general lot
Because our spirits have forgot,

In action's dizzying eddy whirl'd,

The something that infects the world.

EPILOGUE TO

LESSING'S LAOCOÖN.

NE morn as through Hyde Park we walk'd,

ONE

My friend and I, by chance we talk'd

Of Lessing's famed Laocoön;

And after we awhile had gone

In Lessing's track, and tried to see

What painting is, what poetry

Diverging to another thought,

'Ah,' cries my friend, but who hath taught

Why music and the other arts

Oftener perform aright their parts

Than poetry? why she, than they,

Fewer fine successes can display?

'For 'tis so, surely! Even in Greece, Where best the poet framed his piece, Even in that Phoebus-guarded ground

Pausanias on his travels found