See if we cannot beat thine angels yet! Such is my task. I go to gather this
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
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!
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!
SCENE, Constantinople; the house of a Greek conjurer. 1521.
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.
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!
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,
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?
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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