We shut our eyes, and muse
How our own minds are made,
What springs of thought they use,
How rightened, how betrayed,—
And spend our wit to name what most employ unnamed.
But still, as we proceed,
The mass swells more and more
Of volumes yet to read,
Of secrets yet to explore.
Our hair grows gray, our eyes are dimmed, our heat is tamed;
We rest our faculties,
And thus address the gods:
“True science if there is,
It stays in your abodes!
Man’s measures cannot mete the immeasurable all.
“You only can take in
The world’s immense design;
Our desperate search was sin,
Which henceforth we resign,
Sure only that your mind sees all things which befall.”
Fools! That in man’s brief term
He cannot all things view,
Affords no ground to affirm
That there are gods who do;
Nor does being weary prove that he has where to rest.
Again: Our youthful blood
Claims rapture as its right;
The world, a rolling flood
Of newness and delight,
Draws in the enamoured gazer to its shining breast;
Pleasure, to our hot grasp,
Gives flowers after flowers;
With passionate warmth we clasp
Hand after hand in ours;
Now do we soon perceive how fast our youth is spent.
At once our eyes grow clear!
We see, in blank dismay,
Year posting after year,
Sense after sense decay;
Our shivering heart is mined by secret discontent.
Yet still, in spite of truth,
In spite of hopes entombed,
That longing of our youth
Burns ever unconsumed,
Still hungrier for delight as delights grow more rare.
We pause; we hush our heart,
And thus address the gods:—
“The world hath failed to impart
The joy our youth forebodes,
Failed to fill up the void which in our breasts we bear.
“Changeful till now, we still
Looked on to something new;
Let us, with changeless will,
Henceforth look on to you,
To find with you the joy we in vain here require!”