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. A placid and continuous whole; That general life, which does not cease, That life, whose dumb wish is not miss'd The life of plants, and stones, and rain— Fate gave, what chance shall not control, You listen!--but that wandering smile, Wash'd, eddying, from this bank, their home. Are less, the poet more, than man; They feel not, though they move and see! Breathes, when he will, immortal air, Where Orpheus and where Homer are. The world in which we live and move 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, 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; Rather, that heart, which burns in thee, Be passionate hopes not ill resign'd And though fate grudge to thee and me Yet they, believe me, who await No gifts from chance, have conquer'd fate. --- Not foolish, Fausta! in His eye, Is but a quiet watershed Whence, equally, the seas of life and death are fed. Enough, we live!—and if a life, And even could the intemperate prayer Man iterates, while these forbear, For movement, for an ampler sphere, Not milder is the general lot 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 |