CXX.
He exults in the victory of a higher faith. We are not “magnetic mockeries”—simply material “brain”—“casts in clay”—to perish as soon as the galvanic battery ceases to act,
“not in vain,
Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death.”
Let Science prove the contrary, even that we only exist for this life, and I won’t stay here. And Science herself would then be valueless, since she had only taught us our nothingness.
Let “the wiser man” of the future
“up from childhood shape
His action like the greater ape,
But I was born to other things.”
This is spoken ironically, and is a strong protest against materialism, but not against evolution.[83] Nevertheless, the gorilla is not our grandfather!
CXXI.
“Sad Hesper,” the evening star, only rises to “follow the buried sun;” but, in the “dim and dimmer” light of late afternoon, it watches the conclusion of man’s daily labours. The teams are loosened from the waggons, “the boat is drawn upon the shore,” the house door is closed, “and life is darken’d in the brain” of the sleeper.