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See if we cannot beat thine angels yet!
Such is my task. I go to gather this

dreams

The sacred knowledge, here and there dispersed
About the world, long lost or never found.
And why should I be sad or lorn of hope?
Why ever make man's good distinct from God's,
Or, finding they are one, why dare mistrust?
Who shall succeed if not one pledged like me?
Mine is no mad attempt to build a world
Apart from his, like those who set themselves
To find the nature of the spirit they bore,
And, taught betimes that all their
gorgeous
Were only born to vanish in this life,
Refused to fit them to its narrow sphere,
But chose to figure forth another world
And other frames meet for their vast desires,
And all a dream! Thus was life scorned; but life
Shall yet be crowned: twine amaranth! I am priest !
And all for yielding with a lively spirit
A poor existence, parting with a youth
Like those who squander every energy
Convertible to good, on painted toys,
Breath-bubbles, gilded dust! And though I spurn
All adventitious aims, from empty praise
To love's award, yet whoso deems such helps
Important, and concerns himself for me,
May know even these will follow with the rest
As in the steady rolling Mayne, asleep
Yonder, is mixed its mass of schistous ore.
My own affections, laid to rest awhile,
Will waken purified, subdued alone

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By all I have achieved. Till then till then
Ah, the time-wiling loitering of a page

Through bower and over lawn, till eve shall bring
The stately lady's presence whom he loves
The broken sleep of the fisher whose rough coat
Enwraps the queenly pearl- these are faint types!
See, see they look on me: I triumph now!
But one thing, Festus, Michal! I have told
All I shall e'er disclose to mortal: say ·
Do you believe I shall accomplish this?
Fest. I do believe!

Mich.

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I ever did believe!

Par. Those words shall never fade from out my brain! This earnest of the end shall never fade!

Are there not, Festus, are there not, dear Michal,

Two points in the adventure of the diver,
One when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge,
One-when, a prince, he rises with his pearl?
Festus, I plunge!

Fest.

We wait you when you

rise!

II. PARACELSUS ATTAINS.

SCENE, Constantinople; the house of a Greek conjurer. 1521.

PARACELSUS.

Over the waters in the vaporous West
The sun goes down as in a sphere of gold
Behind the arm of the city, which between,
With all that length of domes and minarets,
Athwart the splendor, black and crooked runs
Like a Turk verse along a scimitar.

There lie, sullen memorial, and no more
Possess my aching sight! 'T is done at last.
Strange and the juggles of a sallow cheat
Have won me to this act ! 'Tis as yon cloud
Should voyage unwrecked o'er many a mountain-top
And break upon a molehill. I have dared
Come to a pause with knowledge; scan for once
The heights already reached, without regard
To the extent above; fairly compute

All I have clearly gained; for once excluding
A brilliant future to supply and perfect

All half-gains and conjectures and crude hopes:
And all because a fortune-teller wills

His credulous seekers should inscribe thus much,
Their previous life's attainment, in his roll,
Before his promised secret, as he vaunts,
Make up the sum: and here, amid the scrawled
Uncouth recordings of the dupes of this
Old arch-genethliac, lie my life's results!

A few blurred characters suffice to note
A stranger wandered long through many lands
And reaped the fruit he coveted in a few
Discoveries, as appended here and there,
The fragmentary produce of much toil,
In a dim heap, fact and surmise together
Confusedly massed as when acquired; he was

Intent on gain to come too much to stay
And scrutinize the little gained: the whole
Slipt in the blank space 'twixt an idiot's gibber
And a mad lover's ditty - there it lies.

And yet those blottings chronicle a life-
A whole life, and my life! Nothing to do,
No problem for the fancy, but a life
Spent and decided, wasted past retrieve
Or worthy beyond peer. Stay, what does this
Remembrancer set down concerning "life"?
"Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream,'
It is the 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 pass o'er him

Till some one hour's experience shows what nothing,
It seemed, 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 hour
As well as any now, let my time be !

Now! I can go no farther; well or ill,

'Tis done. I must desist and take my chance.

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I cannot keep on the stretch: 't is no back-shrinking –
For let but some assurance beam, some close
To my toil grow visible, and I proceed
At any price, though closing it, I die.

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 sang it o'er the sea?

An end, a rest! strange how the notion, once Encountered, gathers strength by moments! Rest! Where has it kept so long? this throbbing brow To cease, this beating heart to cease, all cruel And 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, even my failure, ud Assigned, made sure forever! 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 !
Even in failure, rest! But rest in truth

And power and recompense I hoped that once!

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What, sunk insensibly so deep? Has all
Been undergone for this? This the request
My labor qualified me to present

With no fear of refusal? Had I gone
Slightingly through my task, and so judged fit
To moderate my hopes; nay, were it now
My sole concern to exculpate myself,

End things or mend them,

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why, I could not choose A humbler mood to wait for the event!

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-court so far
That he descries at length the shrine of shrines,
Must let no sneering of the demons' eyes,
Whom he could pass unquailing, fasten now
Upon him, fairly past their power; no, no—
He must not stagger, faint, 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 ordained 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 vow,
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 formed
To rear, should wither; but foreseeing not
The tract, doomed to perpetual barrenness,
Would seem one day, remembered as it was,
Beside the parched sand-waste 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, 't is 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 Main
Forsakes her course to fold as with an arm?

...

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And Festus-my poor Festus, with his praise
And counsel and
fears
grave
where is he now
With 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,
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 my future plans,
Since I had just determined to become
The greatest and most glorious man on earth.
And since that morn all life has been forgotten;
All is one day, one only step between

The outset and the end: one tyrant all-
Absorbing aim fills up the interspace,
One vast unbroken chain of thought, kept up
Through a career 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 she 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

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