Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town,
I sit me down.
For want of me the world’s course will not fail;
When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;
The truth is great, and shall prevail,
When none cares whether it prevail or not.”
Of course we need not remind the poet that it is just the duty of honest men to see that the truth prevails and the lie rots, for his poems are a very pæan of Truth and its high offices; but in this as in others of the odes he gives complete expression to the weariness that at times creeps over all who are struggling for the right. It is like the song of the tired mariners in Tennyson’s Lotos-Eaters.
Again he sings:
“Join, then, if thee it please, the bitter jest
Of mankind’s progress; all its spectral race