And every clime, have spurred in vain
The jaded muscle and the tortured brain,
And here and there, with centuries between,
One happy man belike hath been?
Thou grinning skull, what wouldst thou say,
Save that thy brain, in chase of truth, like mine,
With patient toil pursued its floundering way
By glimmering lights that through dim twilight-shine?
Ye instruments, in sooth, now laugh at me,
With wheel, and cog-wheel, ring, and cylinder;