Save that I heard the dear familiar noise
Of the old ocean, and can well recall
The bliss, the awe, the love without a voice
With which I felt that great heart rise and fall,
Like some untamed and tameless “thing of life”
That frets for something worthy of its strife.
V.
And then I was alone amid the din
Of ceaseless strugglers after wealth and power,
Content to hide the better soul within,
And pass in men’s applause a gaudy hour,—
To act out well a something they are not,—
To be admired and praised—despised, forgot.
VI.
I was alone, but in my fancy grew
A fair ideal, fashioned from the best
And purest feelings that my spirit knew;
And this ideal was the goddess-guest
In my heart’s temple; but I sought not then
To find my goddess in the haunts of men.
VII.
And yet I found her—all-personified
The goddess of my lonely-loving heart,
And—as an artist, when he stands beside
Some genius-fathered, beauteous child of art,
Worships it mutely, with enraptured gaze—
My love was far too deep for words of praise.
VIII.
But, ah! earth’s brightest joys are bought with pain:
Meeting with parting,—smiles with bitter tears,—
Hope ends in sorrow,—loss succeeds to gain,—
And youth’s gay spring-time leads to wintry years;
Nought lives that dies not in the world’s wide range,
And nothing is unchangeable but change.