But if the soul, that slow artificer
For ends its instinct rears from life hath striven,
Feeling beneath its patient webwork stir
Wings only freed in Heaven,
Then and but then to toil is to be wise;
Solved is the riddle of the grand desire
Which ever, ever, for the Distant sighs,
And must perforce aspire.
Rise, then, my soul, take comfort from thy sorrow;
Thou feel'st thy treasure when thou feel'st thy load;
Life without thought, the day without the morrow,
God on the brute bestow'd;
Longings obscure as for a native clime,
Flight from what is to live in what may be,
God gave the Soul.—Thy discontent with Time
Proves thine eternity.
THE TRUE JOY-GIVER.
Oh Œvoë, liber Pater,
Oh, the vintage feast divine,
When the God was in the bosom
And his rapture in the wine;
When the Faun laugh'd out at morning;
When the Mænad hymn'd the night;
And the Earth itself was drunken
With the worship of delight;
Oh Œvoë, liber Pater,
Whose orgies are upon
The hilltops of Parnassus,
The banks of Helicon;—
How often have I hail'd thee!
How often have I been
The bearer of the thyrsus,
When its wither'd leaves were green.