Nor know, nor e’en remotely can divine
The sense, or purport, or the probable end,
One only guide to our blind work we keep,
To obey orders, and to fight it out.
Some hapless sad petitioner, no doubt,
With the true plaintiveness of real distress,
Twisting her misery to a marketable lie,
To waste my close-shorn interval of rest.
She came upon me in my weaker thoughts,
Those weaker thoughts that still indeed recur,