XLV.
Life is a river, that hath caught its gleam
From age’s lingering years, and youth’s proud date,
From dull despair, and from the hopes, that seem
To form their longing, and to hide their hate;
From sickness, quailing underneath her pains;
And health, exulting in his pride of life;
From black meláncholy, that turns her gains,
All to the theme of an unending strife;
From that fine frame of beauty and of bliss,
That, over-sensitive, will not distort
Nature’s delights to Hell’s triumphant hiss,
That, ’mid its sorrows, lives near joy’s high court:
From genius, freedom, beauty it assumes
As many forms, as hate’s dark hell consumes.
XLVI.
I once inquired, whence the cicada brought
The joy whose music prattles through the day;
I wished that the glad lark would but have taught,
Whence came the glee that could incite his lay;
And, as the rolling streams of music flow,
Building all heaven along the deep blue wave,
I prayed, that I might e’er thus rapturous glow
And wholly live within the bliss they gave,
When, on the dancing waters, the white sail
Grows big with kisses of the lustful wind,
Blushing at sunrise, and at midnight pale,
All for some lurking love that match’d their kind;
Then, anxiously, I sought that blissful bound;
That was long since e’er thou, my friend, wast found.
XLVII.
To some the world is but a ragged screen,
Hiding the essence of eternal fire;
They tear its tatters, and would peep between;
The unknown is lovely, and the rest is mire.
And other some glory in Nature’s robe,
Dare scorn ideal monsters of the mind,
Where man would test the heart with his nice probe,
Suit his sick taste, and leave the rest behind;
And some are drunken of they know not what,
And cull what sweets may hang from every hour,
Nor hope, nor pause, but magnify the sot;
Know not the weed, or train it as their flower.
Let these rejoice, yet happier, by far,
The silly brutes, that gorge at pleasure, are.