This matter, lest I learn too much. Let be
That popular praise would little instigate
Your efforts, nor particular approval
Reward you; put reward aside; alone
You shall go forth upon your arduous task,
None shall assist you, none partake your toil,
None share your triumph: still you must retain
Some one to cast your glory on, to share
Your rapture with. Were I elect like you,
I would encircle me with love, and raise
A rampart of my fellows; it should seem
Impossible for me to fail, so watched

By gentle friends who made my cause their

own.

They should ward off fate's envy - the great gift,

Extravagant when claimed by me alone,
Being so a gift to them as well as me.

If danger daunted me or ease seduced,

How calmly their sad eyes should gaze reproach!

Mich. O Aureole, can I sing when all alone, Without first calling, in my fancy, both To listen by my side- even I! And you? Do you not feel this? Say that you feel this! Par. I feel 't is pleasant that my aims, at length

Allowed their weight, should be supposed to need

...

A further strengthening in these goodly helps!
My course allures for its own sake, its sole
Intrinsic worth; and ne'er shall boat of mine
Adventure forth for gold and apes at once.
Your sages say, "if human, therefore weak:
If weak, more need to give myself entire
To my pursuit; and by its side, all else
No matter! I deny myself but little
In waiving all assistance save its own.
Would there were some real sacrifice to make!
Your friends the sages threw their joys away,
While I must be content with keeping mine.
Fest. But do not cut yourself from human
weal!

You cannot thrive -
- a man that dares effect
To spend his life in service to his kind
For no reward of theirs, unbound to them
By any tie; nor do so, Aureole! No-
There are strange punishments for such.

up

Give

(Although no visible good flow thence) some part

Of the glory to another; hiding thus,
Even from yourself, that all is for yourself.
Say, say almost to God-"I have done all
For her, not for myself!"

Par.
And who but lately
Was to rejoice in my success like you?
Whom should I love but both of you?
Fest.
I know not:
But know this, you, that 't is no will of mine
You should abjure the lofty claims you make;
And this the cause- I can no longer seek
To overlook the truth, that there would be
A monstrous spectacle upon the earth,
Beneath the pleasant sun, among the trees:
- A being knowing not what love is.
me!

You are endowed with faculties which bear

Hear

Annexed to them as 't were a dispensation
To summon meaner spirits to do their will
And gather round them at their need; inspiring
Such with a love themselves can never feel,
Passionless 'mid their passionate votaries.
I know not if you joy in this or no,

Or ever dream that common men can live
On objects you prize lightly, but which make
Their heart's sole treasure: the affections seem
Beauteous at most to you, which we must taste
Or die and this strange quality accords,
I know not how, with you; sits well upon
That luminous brow, though in another it
scowls

An eating brand, a shame. I dare not judge

hopes away,

And stay with us! An angel warns m, too, Man should be humble; you are very proud: And God, dethroned, has doleful plagues for such!

Warns me to have in dread no quick repulse,
No slow defeat, but a complete success:
You will find all you seek, and perish so!
Par. (after a pause). Are these the barren
first-fruits of my quest?

Is love like this the natural lot of all?
How many years of pain might one such hour
O'erbalance? Dearest Michal, dearest Festus,
What shall I say, if not that I desire

To justify your love; and will, dear friends,
In swerving nothing from my first resolves.
See, the great moon! and ere the_mottled owls
Were wide awake, I was to go. It seems
You acquiesce at last in all save this-
If I am like to compass what I seek
By the untried career I choose; and then,
If that career, making but small account
Of much of life's delight, will yet retain
Sufficient to sustain my soul: for thus
I understand these fond fears just expressed.
And first; the lore you praise and I neglect,
The labors and the precepts of old time,

I have not lightly disesteemed. But, friends,
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may be-
lieve.

There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fulness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear perception- which is truth.
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error: and, to KNOW,
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light

Supposed to be without. Watch narrowly
The demonstration of a truth, its birth,
And you trace back the effluence to its spring
And source within us; where broods radiance

vast,

To be elicited ray by ray, as chance

Shall favor: chance-for hitherto, your sage Even as he knows not how those beams are born,

As little knows he what unlocks their fount:
And men have oft grown old among their books
To die case-hardened in their ignorance,
Whose careless youth had promised what long
years

Of unremitted labor ne'er performed:
While, contrary, it has chanced some idle day,
To autumn loiterers just as fancy-free
As the midges in the sun, gives birth at last
To truth-produced mysteriously as cape
Of cloud grown out of the invisible air.
Hence, may not truth be lodged alike in all
The lowest as the highest? some slight film
The interposing bar which binds a soul

And makes the idiot, just as makes the sage
Some film removed, the happy outlet whence
Truth issues proudly? See this soul of ours!
How it strives weakly in the child, is loosed
In manhood, clogged by sickness, back com-
pelled

By age and waste, set free at last by death:
Why is it, flesh enthralls it or enthrones?
What is this flesh we have to penetrate?
Oh, not alone when life flows still, do truth
And power emerge, but also when strange
chance

Ruffles its current; in unused conjuncture, When sickness breaks the body-hunger, watching,

Excess or languor-oftenest death's approach,
Peril, deep joy or woe. One man shall crawl
Through life surrounded with all stirring things,
Unmoved; and he goes mad: and from the
wreck

Of what he was, by his wild talk alone,
You first collect how great a spirit he hid.
Therefore, set free the soul alike in all,
Discovering the true laws by which the flesh
Aceloys the spirit! We may not be doomed
To cope with seraphs, but at least the rest
Shall cope with us. Make no more giants, God,
But elevate the race at once! We ask
To put forth just our strength, our human
strength,

All starting fairly, all equipped alike,
Gifted alike, all eagle-eyed, true-hearted -
See if we cannot beat thine angels yet!
Such is my task. I go to gather this
The sacred knowledge, here and there dispersed
About the world, long lost or never found.
And why should I be sad or lorn of hope?
Why ever make man's good distinct from God's,
Or, finding they are one, why dare mistrust?
Who shall succeed if not one pledged like me?
Mine is no mad attempt to build a world
Apart from his, like those who set themselves
To find the nature of the spirit they bore,
And, taught betimes that all their gorgeous
dreams

Were only born to vanish in this life,
Refused to fit them to its narrow sphere,
But chose to figure forth another world

And other frames meet for their vast desires,
And all a dream! Thus was life scorned; but life

Over the waters in the vaporous West
The sun goes down as in a sphere of gold
Behind the arm of the city, which between,
With all that length of domes and minarets,
Athwart the splendor, black and crooked runs
Like a Turk verse along a scimitar.
There lie, sullen memorial, and no more
Possess my aching sight! 'Tis done at last.
Strange- and the juggles of a sallow cheat
Have won me to this act! 'Tis as yon cloud
Should voyage unwrecked o'er many a moun-
tain-top

And break upon a molehill. I have dared
Come to a pause with knowledge; scan for once
The heights already reached, without regard
To the extent above; fairly compute

All I have clearly gained; for once excluding
A brilliant future to supply and perfect
All half-gains and conjectures and crude hopes:
And all because a fortune-teller wills

His credulous seekers should inscribe thus much

Their previous life's attainment, in his roll,
Before his promised secret, as he vaunts,
Make up the sum: and here, amid the scrawled
Uncouth recordings of the dupes of this
Old arch-genethliac, lie my life's results!

A few blurred characters suffice to note
A stranger wandered long through many lands
And reaped the fruit he coveted in a few
Discoveries, as appended here and there,
The fragmentary produce of much toil,
In a dim heap, fact and surmise together
Confusedly massed as when acquired; he was
Intent on gain to come too much to stay
And scrutinize the little gained: the whole
Slipt in the blank space 'twixt an idiot's gibber
And a mad lover's ditty- there it lies.

And yet those blottings chronicle a life-
A whole life, and my life! Nothing to do,
No problem for the fancy, but a life
Spent and decided, wasted past retrieve
Or worthy beyond peer. Stay, what does this
Remembrancer set down concerning "life"?
Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty
dream,'

It is the echo of time; and he whose heart
Beat first beneath a human heart, whose speech
Was copied from a human tongue, can never
Recall when he was living yet knew not this.
Nevertheless long seasons pass o'er him
Till some one hour's experience shows what no-
thing,

It seemed, could clearer show; and ever after,
An altered brow and eye and gait and speech
Attest that now he knows the adage true,
'Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty
dream.

Ay, my brave chronicler, and this same hour As well as any: now, let my time be!

Now! I can go no farther; well or ill,
'Tis done. I must desist and take my chance.
I cannot keep on the stretch: 't is no back-
shrinking-

For let but some assurance beam, some close
To my toil grow visible, and I proceed
At any price, though closing it, I die.

Else, here I pause. The old Greek's prophecy
Is like to turn out true: "I shall not quit
His chamber till I know what I desire!
Was it the light wind sang it o'er the sea?

An end, a rest! strange how the notion, once
Encountered, gathers strength by moments!
Rest!

Where has it kept so long? this throbbing brow To cease, this beating heart to cease, all cruel And gnawing thoughts to cease! To dare let down

My strung, so high-strung brain, to dare unnerve My harassed o'ertasked frame, to know my

place,

My portion, my reward, even my failure, Assigned, made sure forever! To lose myself

Among the common creatures of the world,
To draw some gain from having been a man,
Neither to hope nor fear, to live at length!
Even in failure, rest! But rest in truth
And power and recompense... I hoped that
once!

What, sunk insensibly so deep? Has all
Been undergone for this? This the request
My labor qualified me to present

With no fear of refusal ? Had I gone
Slightingly through my task, and so judged fit
To moderate my hopes; nay, were it now
My sole concern to exculpate myself,
End things or mend them, why, I could not
choose

A humbler mood to wait for the event!
No, no, there needs not this; no, after all,
At worst I have performed my share of the
task:

The rest is God's concern; mine, merely this,
To know that I have obstinately held
By my own work. The mortal whose brave foot
Has trod, unscathed, the temple-court so far
That he descries at length the shrine of shrines,
Must let no sneering of the demons' eyes,
Whom he could pass unquailing, fasten now
Upon him, fairly past their power; no, no-
He must not stagger, faint, fall down at last,
Having a charm to baffle them; behold,
He bares his front: a mortal ventures thus
Serene amid the echoes, beams and glooms!
If he be priest henceforth, if he wake up
The god of the place to ban and blast him there,
Both well! What's failure or success to me?
I have subdued my life to the one purpose
Whereto I ordained it; there alone I spy,
No doubt, that way I may be satisfied.

Yes, well have I subdued my life! beyond
The obligation of my strictest vow,
The contemplation of my wildest bond,
Which gave my nature freely up, in truth,
But in its actual state, consenting fully
All passionate impulses its soil was formed
To rear, should wither; but foreseeing not
The tract, doomed to perpetual barrenness,
Would seem one day, remembered as it was,
Beside the parched sand-waste which now it is,
Already strewn with faint blooms, viewless then.
I ne'er engaged to root up loves so frail
I felt them not; yet now, 't is very plain
Some soft spots had their birth in me at first,
If not love, say, like love: there was a time
When yet this wolfish hunger after knowledge
Set not remorselessly love's claims aside.
This heart was human once, or why recall
Einsiedeln, now, and Würzburg which the
Mayne

Forsakes her course to fold as with an arm?

And Festus-my poor Festus, with his praise And counsel and grave fears-where is he now With the sweet maiden, long ago his bride?

I surely loved them that last night, at least, When we . . . gone! gone! the better. I am saved

The sad review of an ambitious youth

Choked by vile lusts, unnoticed in their birth,
But let grow up and wind around a will
Till action was destroyed. No, I have gone
Purging my path successively of aught
Wearing the distinct likeness of such lusts.
I have made life consist of one idea:
Ere that was master, up till that was born,
I bear a memory of a pleasant life
Whose small events I treasure; till one morn
I ran o'er the seven little grassy fields,
Startling the flocks of nameless birds, to tell
Poor Festus, leaping all the while for joy,
To leave all trouble for my future plans,
Since I had just determined to become
The greatest and most glorious man on earth.
And since that morn all life has been forgotten:
All is one day, one only step between
The outset and the end: one tyrant all-
Absorbing aim fills up the interspace,
One vast unbroken chain of thought, kept up
Through a career apparently adverse

To its existence: life, death, light and shadow,
The shows of the world, were bare receptacles
Or indices of truth to be wrung thence,
Not ministers of sorrow or delight:

A wondrous natural robe in which she went.
For some one truth would dimly beacon me
From mountains rough with pines, and flit and
wink

O'er dazzling wastes of frozen snow, and tremble
Into assured light in some branching mine
Where ripens, swathed in fire, the liquid gold —
And all the beauty, all the wonder fell
On either side the truth, as its mere robe;
I see the robe now- then I saw the form.
So far, then, I have voyaged with success,
So much is good, then, in this working sea
Which parts me from that happy strip of land:
But o'er that happy strip a sun shone, too
And fainter gleams it as the waves grow rough,
And still more faint as the sea widens; last
I sicken on a dead gulf streaked with light
From its own putrefying depths alone.
Then, God was pledged to take me by the hand;
Now, any miserable juggle can bid
My pride depart. All is alike at length:
God may take pleasure in confounding pride
By hiding secrets with the scorned and base
I am here, in short: so little have I paused
Throughout! I never glanced behind to know
If I had kept my primal light from wane,
And thus insensibly am - what I am!

Oh, bitter; very bitter!

And more bitter, To fear a deeper curse, an inner ruin, Plague beneath plague, the last turning the first To light beside its darkness. Let me weep My youth and its brave hopes, all dead and gone! In tears which burn! Would I were sure to win Some startling secret in their stead, a tincture Of force to flush old age with youth, or breed Gold, or imprison moonbeams till they change To opal shafts!-only that, hurling it Indignant back, I might convince myself My aims remained supreme and pure as ever! Even now, why not desire, for mankind's sake, That if I fail, some fault may be the cause,

That, though I sink, another may succeed?
O God, the despicable heart of us!
Shut out this hideous mockery from my heart! }

"T was politic in you, Aureole, to reject
Single rewards, and ask them in the lump;
At all events, once launched, to hold straight on:
For now 't is all or nothing. Mighty profit
Your gains will bring if they stop short of such
Full consummation! As a man, you had
A certain share of strength; and that is gone
Already in the getting these you boast.

Do not they seem to laugh, as who should say — "Great master, we are here indeed, dragged forth

To light; this hast thou done: be glad! Now, seek

The strength to use which thou hast spent in getting!"

And yet 't is much, surely 't is very much,
Thus to have emptied youth of all its gifts,
To feed a fire meant to hold out till morn
Arrived with inexhaustible light; and lo,
I have heaped up my last, and day dawns not!
And I am left with gray hair, faded hands,
And furrowed brow. Ha, have I, after all,
Mistaken the wild nursling of my breast?
Knowledge it seemed, and power, and recom-
pense!

Was she who glided through my room of nights, Who laid my head on her soft knees and smoothed

The damp locks,-whose sly soothings just began
When my sick spirit craved repose awhile
God! was I fighting sleep off for death's sake?

God! Thou art mind! Unto the master-mind
Mind should be precious. Spare my mind alone!
All else I will endure; if, as I stand
Here, with my gains, thy thunder smite me
down,

I bow me; 't is thy will, thy righteous will;
I o'erpass life's restrictions, and I die;
And if no trace of my career remain
Save a thin corpse at pleasure of the wind
In these bright chambers level with the air
See thou to it! But if my spirit fail,

My once proud spirit forsake me at the last,
Hast thou done well by me? So do not thou!
Crush not my mind, dear God, though I be
crushed!

Hold me before the frequence of thy seraphs And say, "I crushed him, lest he should disturb

My law. Men must not know their strength : behold,

Weak and alone, how he had raised himself!"

But if delusions trouble me, and thou,
Not seldom felt with rapture in thy help
Throughout my toils and wanderings, dost in-
tend

To work man's welfare through my weak endeavor,

To crown my mortal forehead with a beam From thine own blinding crown, to smile, and guide

This puny hand and let the work so wrought
Be styled my work, - hear me ! I covet not
An influx of new power, an angel's soul:
It were no marvel then- but I have reached
Thus far, a man; let me conclude, a man!
Give but one hour of my first energy,
Of that invincible faith, but only one!
That I may cover with an eagle-glance
The truths I have, and spy some certain way
To mould them, and completing them, possess !
Yet God is good: I started sure of that,
And why dispute it now? I'll not believe
But some undoubted warning long ere this
Had reached me: a fire-labarum was not deemed
Too much for the old founder of these walls.
Then, if my life has not been natural,
It has been monstrous: yet, till late, my course
So ardently engrossed me, that delight,
A pausing and reflecting joy, 't is plain,
Could find no place in it. True, I am worn;
But who clothes summer, who is life itself?
God, that created all things, can renew !
And then, though after-life to please me now
Must have no likeness to the past, what hinders
Reward from springing out of toil, as changed
As bursts the flower from earth and root and
stalk?

What use were punishment, unless some sin
Be first detected? let me know that first!
No man could ever offend as I have done . . .
(A voice from within.)

I hear a voice, perchance I heard
Long ago, but all too low,

So that scarce a care it stirred

If the voice were real or no :

I heard it in my youth when first
The waters of my life outburst:

But, now their stream ebbs faint, I hear
That voice, still low, but fatal-clear-
As if all poets, God ever meant
Should save the world, and therefore lent
Great gifts to, but who, proud, refused
To do his work, or lightly used

Those gifts, or failed through weak endeavor,
So, mourn cast off by him forever, -
As if these leaned in airy ring

To take me; this the song they sing.

"Lost, lost! yet come,

With our wan troop make thy home.
Come, come! for we

Will not breathe, so much as breathe
Reproach to thee,

Knowing what thou sink'st beneath.
So sank we in those old years,
We who bid thee, come! thou last
Who, living yet, hast life o'erpast.
And altogether we, thy peers,
Will pardon crave for thee, the last
Whose trial is done, whose lot is cast
With those who watch but work no more,
Who gaze on life but live no more.
Yet we trusted thou shouldst speak
The message which our lips, too weak,
Refused to utter, shouldst redeem
Our fault: such trust, and all a dream!
Yet we chose thee a birthplace

Where the richness ran to flowers:
Couldst not sing one song for grace?
Not make one blossom man's and ours?
Must one more recreant to his race
Die with unexerted powers,

And join us, leaving as he found
The world, he was to loosen, bound?
Anguish! ever and forever;
Still beginning, ending never!
Yet, lost and last one, come!
How couldst understand, alas,
What our pale ghosts strove to say,
As their shades did glance and pass
Before thee night and day?

Thou wast blind as we were dumb:
Once more, therefore, come, O come!
How should we clothe, how arm the spirit
Shall next thy post of life inherit-
How guard him from thy speedy ruin?
Tell us of thy sad undoing

Here, where we sit, ever pursuing
Our weary task, ever renewing
Sharp sorrow, far from God who gave
Our powers, and man they could not save!
(APRILE enters.)

Ha, ha! our king that wouldst be, here at last? Art thou the poet who shall save the world? Thy hand to mine! Stay, fix thine eyes on

mine!

Thou wouldst be king? Still fix thine eyes on mine!

Par. Ha, ha! why crouchest not? Am I not king?

So torture is not wholly unavailing!

Have my fierce spasms compelled thee from thy lair?

Art thou the sage I only seemed to be,
Myself of after-time, my very self

With sight a little clearer, strength more firm,
Who robes him in my robe and grasps my

crown

For just a fault, a weakness, a neglect?

I scarcely trusted God with the surmise That such might come, and thou didst hear the while!

Aprile. Thine eyes are lustreless to mine: my hair

Is soft, nay silken soft: to talk with thee Flushes my cheek, and thou art ashy-pale. Truly, thou hast labored, hast withstood her

lips,

The siren's! Yes, 't is like thou hast attained! Tell me, dear master, wherefore now thou comest?

I thought thy solemn songs would have their meed

In after-time; that I should hear the earth
Exult in thee and echo with thy praise,
While I was laid forgotten in my grave.
Par. Ah fiend, I know thee, I am not thy
dupe!

Thou art ordained to follow in my track,
Reaping my sowing, as I scorned to reap
The harvest sown by sages passed away.
Thou art the sober searcher, cautious striver,
As if, except through me, thou hast searched
or striven!

Ay, tell the world! Degrade me after all,