Couldst thou, Pausanias, learn

How deep a fault is this;
Couldst thou but once discern
Thou hast no right to bliss,

No title from the Gods to welfare and repose;

Then thou wouldst look less mazed
Whene'er of bliss debarr'd,

Nor think the Gods were crazed
When thy own lot went hard.
But we are all the same—the fools of our
own woes!

For, from the first faint morn
Of life, the thirst for bliss
Deep in man's heart is born;
And, sceptic as he is,

He fails not to judge clear if this be quench'd or no.

Nor is the thirst to blame.
Man errs not that he deems
His welfare his true aim,
He errs because he dreams

The world does but exist that welfare to bestow.

We mortals are no kings

For each of whom to sway

A new-made world up-springs,
Meant merely for his play;

No, we are strangers here; the world is from of old.

In vain our pent wills fret,

And would the world subdue.
Limits we did not set

Condition all we do;

Born into life we are, and life must be our mould.

Born into life !-man grows
Forth from his parents' stem,
And blends their bloods, as those
Of theirs are blent in them;

So each new man strikes root into a far fore-time.

Born into life!—we bring

A bias with us here,

And, when here, each new thing
Affects us we come near;

To tunes we did not call our being must keep chime.

Born into life!-in vain, Opinions, those or these, Unalter'd to retain

The obstinate mind decrees; Experience, like a sea, soaks all-effacing in.

Born into life!- who lists May what is false hold dear, And for himself make mists Through which to see less clear; The world is what it is, for all our dust and din.

Born into life!-'tis we,

And not the world, are new; Our cry for bliss, our plea, Others have urged it tooOur wants have all been felt, our errors made before.

No eye could be too sound
To observe a world so vast,
No patience too profound
To sort what's here amass'd;

How man may here best live no care too great to explore.

But we as some rude guest Would change, where'er he roam, The manners there profess'd To those he brings from homeWe mark not the world's course, but would have it take ours.

The world's course proves the terms
On which man wins content;
Reason the proof confirms--
We spurn it, and invent

A false course for the world, and for ourselves, false powers.

Riches we wish to get,

Yet remain spendthrifts still;
We would have health, and yet
Still use our bodies ill;

Bafflers of our own prayers, from youth to life's last scenes.

We would have inward peace,
Yet will not look within;
We would have misery cease,
Yet will not cease from sin;

We want all pleasant ends, but will use no harsh means;

We do not what we ought,
What we ought not, we do,
And lean upon the thought

That chance will bring us through ; But our own acts, for good or ill, are mightier powers.

Yet, even when man forsakes
All sin,--is just, is pure,
Abandons all which makes
His welfare insecure,--

Other existences there are, that clash with ours.

Like us, the lightning-fires
Love to have scope and play;
The stream, like us, desires
An unimpeded way:

Like us, the Libyan wind delights to roam at large.

Streams will not curb their pride
The just man not to entomb,
Nor lightnings go aside

To give his virtues room;

Nor is that wind less rough which blows a good man's barge.

Nature, with equal mind,
Sees all her sons at play;
Sees man control the wind,
The wind sweep man away;

Allows the proudly-riding and the foundering bark.

And, lastly, though of ours
No weakness spoil our lot,
Though the non-human powers
Of Nature harm us not,

The ill deeds of other men make often our life dark.

What were the wise man's plan?--
Through this sharp, toil-set life,
To work as best he can,

And win what's won by strife.But we an easier way to cheat our pains have found.

Scratch'd by a fall, with moans
As children of weak age
Lend life to the dumb stones
Whereon to vent their rage,

And bend their little fists, and rate the senseless ground;

So, loath to suffer mute,
We, peopling the void air,
Make Gods to whom to impute
The ills we ought to bear;

With God and Fate to rail at, suffering easily.

Yet grant-as sense long miss'd
Things that are now perceived,
And much may still exist

Which is not yet believed-

Grant that the world were full of Gods we cannot see ;

All things the world which fill
Of but one stuff are spun,
That we who rail are still,
With what we rail at, one;

One with the o'erlabored Power that through the breadth and length

Of earth, and air, and sea,
In men, and plants, and stones,
Hath toil perpetually,

And travails, pants, and moans: Fain would do all things well, but sometimes fails in strength.

And patiently exact
This universal God
Alike to any act
Proceeds at any nod,

And quietly declaims the cursings of himself.

This is not what man hates,
Yet he can curse but this.
Harsh Gods and hostile Fates
Are dreams! this only is

Is everywhere; sustains the wise, the foolish elf.

Not only, in the intent

To attach blame elsewhere,

Do we at will invent

Stern Powers who make their care To embitter human life, malignant Deities;

But, next, we would reverse

The scheme ourselves have spun,
And what we made to curse
We now would lean upon,
And feign kind Gods who perfect wha
man vainly tries.

Look, the world tempts our eye,
And we would know it all!
We map the starry sky,

We mine this earthen ball,

We measure the sea-tides, we number the sea-sands;

We scrutinise the dates Of long-past human things, The bounds of effaced states, The lines of deceased kings; We search out dead men's words, and works of dead men's hands:

Again. Our youthful blood
Claims rapture as its right;
The world, a rolling flood
Of newness and delight,

Draws in the enamor'd gazer to its shining breast;

Pleasure, to our hot grasp,
Gives flowers after flowers;
With passionate warmth we clasp
Hand after hand in ours;

Now do we soon perceive how fast our youth is spent.

At once our eyes grow clear!
We see, in blank dismay,
Year posting after year,
Sense after sense decay;

Our shivering heart is mined by secret discontent;

Yet still, in spite of truth, In spite of hopes entomb'd, That longing of our youth

Is it so small a thing

To have enjoy'd the sun,

To have lived light in the spring,

To have loved, to have thought, to have done;

To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes—

That we must feign a bliss
Of doubtful future date,

And, while we dream on this,
Lose all our present state,

And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose?

Not much, I know, you prize What pleasures may be had, Who look on life with eyes Estranged, like mine, and sad; And yet the village-churl feels the truth more than you.

Where the moon-silver'd inlets
Send far their light voice
Up the still vale of Thisbe,
O speed, and rejoice!

On the sward at the cliff-top
Lie strewn the white flocks,
On the cliff-side the pigeons
Roost deep in the rocks.

In the moonlight the shepherds,
Soft lull'd by the rills,
Lie wrapped in their blankets
Asleep on the hills.

-What forms are these coming
So white through the gloom?
What garments out-glistening
The gold-flower'd broom?

What sweet-breathing presence
Out-perfumes the thyme?
What voices enrapture
The night's balmy prime?-

The spots which recall him survive,
For he lent a new life to these hills.
The Pillar still broods o'er the fields
Which border Ennerdale Lake,
And Egremont sleeps by the sea.
The gleam of The Evening Star
Twinkles on Grasmere no more,
But ruin'd and solemn and gray
The sheepfold of Michael survives;
And, far to the south, the heath
Still blows in the Quantock coombs
By the favorite waters of Ruth.
These survive!-yet not without pain
Pain and dejection to-night,
Can I feel that their poet is gone.

He grew old in an age he condemn'd.
He look'd on the rushing decay

Of the times which had shelter'd his youth,

Felt the dissolving throes

Of a social order he loved;
Outlived his brethren, his peers;
And, like the Theban seer,
Died in his enemies' day.

Cold bubbled the spring of Tilphusa,
Copais lay bright in the moon,
Helicon glass'd in the lake
Its firs, and afar rose the peaks
Of Parnassus, snowily clear;
Thebes was behind him in flames,
And the clang of arms in his ear,
When his awe-struck captors led
The Theban seer to the spring.
Tiresias drank and died.
Nor did reviving Thebes
See such a prophet again.

Well may we mourn, when the head
Of a sacred poet lies low

In an age which can rear them no more!
The complaining millions of men
Darken in labor and pain;

But he was a priest to us all

Of the wonder and bloom of the world, Which we saw with his eyes, and were glad.

He is dead, and the fruit-bearing day
Of his race is past on the earth;
And darkness returns to our eyes.
For, oh! is it you, is it you,
Moonlight, and shadow, and lake,
And mountains, that fill us with joy,
Or the poet who sings you so well?
Is it you, O beauty, O grace,

O charm, O romance, that we feel,
Or the voice which reveals what you are?
Are ye, like daylight and sun,
Shared and rejoiced in by all?
Or are ye immersed in the mass
Of matter, and hard to extract.
Or sunk at the core of the world
Too deep for the most to discern?
Like stars in the deep of the sky,
Which arise on the glass of the sage,
But are lost when their watcher is gone.

"They are here "--I heard, as men heard In Mysian Ida the voice

Of the Mighty Mother, or Crete,
The murmur of Nature reply-

46

Loveliness, magic, and grace,

They are here! they are set in the world. They abide; and the finest of soals

Hath not been thrill'd by them all,
Nor the dullest been dead to them quite.
The poet who sings them may die,
But they are immortal and live,
For they are the life of the world.
Will ye not learn it, and know,
When ye mourn that a poet is dead,
That the singer was less than his themes,
Life, and emotion, and I?

"More than the singer are these.
Weak is the tremor of pain

That thrills in his mournfullest chord
To that which once ran through his soul.
Cold the elation of joy

In his gladdest, airiest song,

To that which of old in his youth
Fill'd him and made him divine.
Hardly his voice at its best
Gives us a sense of the awe,
The vastness, the grandeur, the gloom
Of the unlit gulf of himself.

"Ye know not yourselves; and your bards-

The clearest, the best, who have read
Most in themselves-have beheld
Less than they left unreveal'd.
Ye express not yourselves;--can you
make

With marble, with color, with word,
What charm'd you in others re-live?
Can thy pencil, O artist! restore
The figure, the bloom of thy love,
As she was in her morning of spring?
Canst thou paint the ineffable smile
Of her eyes as they rested on thine?
Can the image of life have the glow,
The motion of life itself?