Alas for Labour, if indeed more wise
To drink life's tide unwitting where it flows;
Renounce the arduous palm, and only prize
The Cnidian vine and rose!
Out from the Porch the Stoic cries "For shame!"
What hast thou left us, Stoic, in thy school?
"That pain or pleasure is but in the name?"
Go, prick thy finger, fool!
Never grave Pallas, never Muse severe
Charm'd this hard life like the free, zoneless Grace;
Pleasure is sweet, in spite of every sneer
On Zeno's wrinkled face.
What gain'd and left ye to this age of ours
Ye early priesthoods of the Isis, Truth,—
When light first glimmer'd from the Cuthite's towers;
When Thebes was in her youth?
When to the weird Chaldæan spoke the seer,
When Hades open'd at Heraclean spells,
When Fate made Nature her interpreter
In leaves and murmuring wells?
When the keen Greek chased flying Science on,
Upward and up the infinite abyss?—
Like perish'd stars your arts themselves have gone
Noiseless to nothingness!
And what is knowledge but the Wizard's ring,
Kindling a flame to circumscribe a ground?
The belt of light that lures the spirit's wing
Hems the invoker round.
Ponder and ask again "what boots our toil?"
Can we the Garden's wanton child gainsay,
When from kind lips he culls their rosy spoil
And lives life's holiday?
Life answers "No—if ended here be life,
Seize what the sense can give—it is thine all;
Disarm thee, Virtue, barren is thy strife;
Knowledge, thy torch let fall.
"Seek thy lost Psyche, yearning Love, no more!
Love is but lust, if soul be only breath;
Who would put forth one billow from the shore
If the great sea be—Death?"