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— Hé 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 Mayne Forsakes her course to fold as with an arm?
And Festus-my poor Festus, with his praise And counsel and grave fears-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 Where ripens, swathed in fire, the liquid gold— And all the beauty, all the wonder fell
On either side the truth, as its mere robe;
I see the robe now-then I saw the form. So far, then, I have voyaged with success, So much is good, then, in this working sea Which parts me from that happy strip of land But o'er that happy strip a sun shone, too! And fainter gleams it as the waves grow rough, And still more faint as the sea widens; last
I sicken on a dead gulf streaked with light From its own putrefying depths alone.
Then, God was pledged to take me by the hand; Now, any miserable juggle can bid
My pride depart. All is alike at length: God may take pleasure in confounding pride By hiding secrets with the scorned and base- I am here, in short: so little have I paused Throughout! I never glanced behind to know If I had kept my primal light from wane, And thus insensibly am-what I am!
To fear a deeper curse, an inner ruin,
Plague beneath plague, the last turning the first To light beside its darkness. Let me weep
My youth and its brave hopes, all dead and gone, In tears which burn! Would I were sure to win Some startling secret in their stead, a tincture Of force to flush old age with youth, or breed Gold, or imprison moonbeams till they change To opal shafts!—only that, hurling it Indignant back, I might convince myself My aims remained supreme and pure as ever ! Even now, why not desire, for mankind's sake, That if I fail, some fault may be the cause, That, though I sink, another may succeed? O God, the despicable heart of us!
Shut out this hideous mockery from my heart!
'T was politic in you, Aureole, to reject Single rewards, and ask them in the lump;
At all events, once launched, to hold straight on: For now 't is all or nothing. Mighty profit Your gains will bring if they stop short of such Full consummation! As a man, you had
A certain share of strength; and that is gone Already in the getting these you boast. Do not they seem to laugh, as who should say— "Great master, we are here indeed, dragged forth
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