To give his virtues room;
Nor is that wind less rough which blows a good man’s barge.
Nature, with equal mind,
Sees all her sons at play;
Sees man control the wind,
The wind sweep man away;
Allows the proudly-riding and the founder’d bark.
And, lastly, though of ours
No weakness spoil our lot,
Though the non-human powers
Of Nature harm us not,
The ill deeds of other men make often our life dark.
What were the wise man’s plan?—
Through this sharp, toil-set life,
To fight as best he can,
And win what’s won by strife.
But we an easier way to cheat our pains have found.
Scratch’d by a fall, with moans
As children of weak age
Lend life to the dumb stones
Whereon to vent their rage,
And bend their little fists, and rate the senseless ground;
So, loath to suffer mute,
We, peopling the void air,
Make Gods to whom to impute
The ills we ought to bear;
With God and Fate to rail at, suffering easily.
Yet grant—as sense long miss’d
Things that are now perceiv’d,
And much may still exist
Which is not yet believ’d—
Grant that the world were full of Gods we cannot see;
All things the world which fill
Of but one stuff are spun,
That we who rail are still,
With what we rail at, one;
One with the o’erlabour’d Power that through the breadth and length
Of earth, and air, and sea,
In men, and plants, and stones,
Hath toil perpetually,
And travails, pants, and moans;
Fain would do all things well, but sometimes fails in strength.
And patiently exact
This universal God
Alike to any act
Proceeds at any nod,
And quietly declaims the cursings of himself.
This is not what man hates,
Yet he can curse but this.
Harsh Gods and hostile Fates
Are dreams! this only is;
Is everywhere; sustains the wise, the foolish elf.
Nor only, in the intent
To attach blame elsewhere,
Do we at will invent
Stern Powers who make their care
To embitter human life, malignant Deities;
But, next, we would reverse
The scheme ourselves have spun,
And what we made to curse
We now would lean upon,
And feign kind Gods who perfect what man vainly tries.
Look, the world tempts our eye,
And we would know it all!
We map the starry sky,
We mine this earthen ball,
We measure the sea-tides, we number the sea-sands;
We scrutinize the dates
Of long-past human things,
The bounds of effac’d states,
The lines of deceased kings;
We search out dead men’s words, and works of dead men’s hands;
We shut our eyes, and muse
How our own minds are made,
What springs of thought they use,
How righten’d, how betray’d;
And spend our wit to name what most employ unnam’d;
But still, as we proceed
The mass swells more and more
Of volumes yet to read,
Of secrets yet to explore.
Our hair grows grey, our eyes are dimm’d, 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 enamour’d 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 entomb’d,
That longing of our youth
Burns ever unconsum’d,
Still hungrier for delight as delights grow more rare.
We pause; we hush our heart,
And thus address the Gods:
“The world hath fail’d to impart
The joy our youth forebodes,
Fail’d to fill up the void which in our breasts we bear.
“Changeful till now, we still
Look’d 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!”
Fools! That so often here
Happiness mock’d our prayer,
I think, might make us fear
A like event elsewhere!
Make us, not fly to dreams, but moderate desire!
And yet, for those who know
Themselves, who wisely take
Their way through life, and bow
To what they cannot break,
Why should I say that life need yield but moderate bliss?
Shall we, with temper spoil’d,
Health sapp’d by living ill,
And judgment all embroil’d
By sadness and self-will,
Shall we judge what for man is not true bliss or is?
Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy’d the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done;
To have advanc’d true friends, and beat down baffling foes;
That we must feign a bliss
Of doubtful future date,
And, while we dream on this,
Lose all our present state,
And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose?
Not much, I know, you prize
What pleasures may be had,
Who look on life with eyes
Estrang’d, like mine, and sad;
And yet the village churl feels the truth more than you,
Who’s loath to leave this life
Which to him little yields;
His hard-task’d sunburnt wife,
His often-labour’d fields,
The boors with whom he talk’d, the country spots he knew.
But thou, because thou hear’st
Men scoff at Heaven and Fate,
Because the Gods thou fear’st
Fail to make blest thy state,
Tremblest, and wilt not dare to trust the joys there are.
I say: Fear not! Life still
Leaves human effort scope.
But, since life teems with
