LXII.
O ye faint touches, that but tire the gaze,
Casting reflection on incompetence;
O all ye thoughts, that weave truth’s tangled maze,
Would we might grasp your spirit’s hidden sense:
Man is shut out from what himself assists;
Too dear-bought self, rich privilege to conceal,
Strange substance, individualized, that twists
A web, it knows not how, more stiff than steel:
Man knows not how, or wherefore, whence, or why;
He thinks that he must go; whither? he doubts,
Creeds he must form and hopes; he cannot fly,
And haply would not, fostering fears he scouts;
Thrown on the world, he’d lose, in the world’s din,
Too fine perception of sad worlds within.
LXIII.
And Death is the glad clasp of knotted braids;
Death seals the circlet, that Life gradual twines;
In all that’s fair, Death, inartistic, trades;
Beauty he saps, beleaguering Youth with mines;
O, art thou usher to a fuller world,
Grim Death, whose smile is cased in a frown?
Or speak’st thou only to an infant curl’d,
Dreaming a moment in a bed of down?
Stalk not too proudly, ravisher of life,
Thy boast shall reach no pearl in Nature’s casket;
What sinks, benumb’d, though lovely, in the strife
Shall cast the slough, that could a moment mask it.
I cannot wholly hate nor love thee, Death,
Thou tak’st my life, but robb’st my friend of breath.
LXIV.
Doubt struggles into Faith, and calls it life,
Hopes turn to gods, and fears take demon forms;
Man must be somewhere stayed in this strange strife;
He feels himself so weak against its storms.
Dim eyes he strains into futurity;
Weak arms, extending, gropes to find his road;
His fingers clutch at what seems Purity;
Thank Heaven! he sees not all their ghastly load.
And, whether all footpaths lead to the same place,
Or the weed hope blossoms into a flower;
Or whether all struggle in a phantom race,
And blow the bubbles of fame, love and power;
All this he knows not, somewhere he would rest,
By pleasure, or content, aye so ’twere best.