Song hath a catalogue of lovely things
Thy kind hath oft defiled,--whose spite misleads
The world too often!--where the poet reads,
As in a fable, of old envyings,
Crows, such as thou, which hush the bird that sings,
Or kill it with their cawings; thorns and weeds,
Such as thyself, 'midst which the wind sows seeds
Of flow'rs, these crush before one blossom swings.
But here and there the wisdom of a School
Unknown to these hath often written down
"Fame" in white ink the future hath turned brown;
When every beauty, heaped with ridicule,
In their ignoble prose, proved their renown,
Making each famous--as an ass or fool.
_AFTERWORD._
_The old enthusiasms
Are dead, quite dead, in me;
Dead the aspiring spasms
Of art and poesy,
That opened magic chasms,
Once, of wild mystery,
In youth's rich Araby.
That opened magic chasms._
_The longing and the care
Are mine; and, helplessly,
The heartache and despair
For what can never be.
More than my mortal share
Of sad mortality,
It seems, God gives to me,
More than my mortal share._
_O world! O time! O fate!
Remorseless trinity!
Let not your wheel abate
Its iron rotary!--
Turn round! nor make me wait,
Bound to it neck and knee,
Hope's final agony!--
Turn round! nor make me wait._
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