And amongst us one,
Who most has sufferd, takes dejectedly
His seat upon the intellectual throne.
Thee at the ferry Oxford riders blithe,
Returning home on summer-nights, have met
Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe,
Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet,
As the punts rope chops round.
The day in his hotness,
The strife with the palm;
The night in her silence,
The stars in their calm.
Is it so small a thing
To have enjoyd the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done;
To have advancd true friends, and beat down baffling foes?
So, loath to suffer mute.
We, peopling the void air,
Make Gods to whom to impute
The ills we ought to bear.
Nature, with equal mind,
Sees all her sons at play
Sees man control the wind,
The wind sweep man away.
We do not what we ought,
What we ought not, we do,
And lean upon the thought
That chance will bring us through.
Thou hast no right to bliss.
The sophist sneers: Fool, take
Thy pleasure, right or wrong!
The pious wail: Forsake
A world these sophists throng!
Be neither saint nor sophist-led, but be a man.
Hither and thither spins
The wind-borne mirroring soul,
A thousand glimpses wins,
And never sees a whole.
Time may restore us in his course
Goethes sage mind and Byrons force;
But where will Europes latter hour
Again find Wordsworths healing power?
Wordsworth has gone from us and ye,
Ah, may ye feel his voice as we!
He too upon a wintry clime
Had fallen on this iron time
Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.
Physician of the Iron Age,
Goethe has done his pilgrimage.
He took the suffering human race,
He read each wound, each weakness clear
And struck his finger on the place,
And said Thou ailest here, and here.
Yet they, believe me, who await
No gifts from Chance, have conquerd Fate.
The World in which we live and move
Outlasts aversion, outlasts love:
Outlasts each effort, interest, hope,
Remorse, grief, joy.
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