A long pause, during which EMPEDOCLES remains motionless, plunged in thought. The night deepens. He moves forward and gazes round him, and proceeds : And you, ye stars, Who slowly begin to marshal, As of old, in the fields of Heaven, Have you, too, survived yourselves? Are you, too, what I fear to become? You too moved joyfully, Among august companions, In an older world, peopled by Gods, In a mightier order, The radiant, rejoicing, intelligent Sons of Heaven! But now, you kindle Your lonely, cold-shining lights, Unwilling lingerers In the heavenly wilderness, For a younger, ignoble world; And renew, by necessity, Night after night your courses, Above a race you know not! Uncaring and undelighted, Without friend and without home; Weary like us, though not Weary with our weariness. No, no, ye stars! there is no death with you, O'er whose lit floor a road of moonbeams leads To Etna's Liparëan sister-fires And the long dusky line of Italy— That mild and luminous floor of waters lives, With held-in joy swelling its heart!—I only, Whose spring of hope is dried, whose spirit has fail'd I, who have not, like these, in solitude Maintain'd courage and force, and in myself Am dead to life and joy! therefore I read Oh that I could glow like this mountain! Oh that my heart bounded with the swell of the sea! Oh that my soul were full of light as the stars! Oh that it brooded over the world like the air! But no, this heart will glow no more! thou art Nothing but a devouring flame of thought— But a naked, eternally restless mind! To the elements it came from Everything will return. Our bodies to earth, Our blood to water, Heat to fire, Breath to air. After a pause: They were well born, they will be well entomb'd! But mind?... And we might gladly share the fruitful stir Down in our mother earth's miraculous womb! Well would it be With what roll'd of us in the stormy main ! We might have joy, blent with the all-bathing air, Or with the nimble radiant life of fire! But mind-but thought— If these have been the master part of us- And never let us clasp and feel the All But through their forms, and modes, and stifling veils. And we shall be unsatisfied as now; And we shall feel the agony of thirst, The ineffable longing for the life of life Baffled for ever; and still thought and mind Will hurry us with them on their homeless march, Over the unallied unopening earth, Over the unrecognising sea; while air Will blow us fiercely back to sea and earth, To our own only true, deep-buried selves, Being one with which we are one with the whole world; Or whether we will once more fall away Into some bondage of the flesh or mind, |