[Greek: UPOTHÊKÊ EIS EMAUTON]
Back to thy books! The swift hours spent in vain
Are flown and gone:
Thou hast no charm to lure them, or regain
What loss hath won.
Up from thy sleep! The dream of idle love,
So frail and fair,
Hath vanished, and its golden wings above
Melt in mid air.
Stand not, nor gaze astonied at the skies,
Serenely cold:
They have no answer for thine eager eyes;
Thy tale is told.
Fool, in all folly cradled, swathed from sense,
To trust a toy;
To purchase from pronounced indifference
A shallow joy;
To leave thy studious native heights untrod
For that low soil,
Where momentary blossoms deck the sod;
To pant and toil
In hungry chasings of the painted fly,
That fluttered past—
Back to thy summits, where what cannot die
Survives the blast!
There, throned in solitary calm, forget
Who wrung thy heart:
Long hours and days of silent years may yet
Restore a part
Of that large heritage and realm sublime,
Which, love-elate,
Thou fain would'st barter for the fields that time
Makes desolate.