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CC.

EXPERIENCE.

STEADILY burning like a lamp enshrined,
The Sanscrit says our lives should pass away;
Even so, but how to guard by night and day
This priceless lamp? For the Unknown God's wind
Fans it for ever; joys and cares combined,

The plague of fire and hail, in through the bars Of this our prison-house make constant jars; No heart of flesh can hold their powers confined.

Not then for us in Western lands is it,

Where every hour brings loads enough for years, Naked on contemplation's mat to sit;

But woe to him who finds no time at all
For questioning, who sleeps in a festive hall;
Who finds no gains in long-remembered tears.

CCI.

SEEKING FORGETFULNESS.

AND yet I am as one who looks behind,
A traveller in a shadowed land astray,
Passing and lost upon the boundary
Of actual things, who turns against the wind,
An hundred simulacral ghosts to find

Close following, an hundred pairs of eyes
Shining around like phosphorescent flies,-
And all of them himself, yet changed in kind.

Those once I was, which of them now am I? Not one, all alien, long abandoned masks, That in some witches' sabbath long since past, Did dance awhile in my life's panoply,

And drank with me from out of the same flasks; Am I not rid of these, not even at last?

CCII.

OZYMANDIAS.

I MET a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

CCIII.

A CHILL IN SUMMER.

I WENT upon a meadow bright with gold
Of buttercups, which glistened on the greer
Of summer grass, veiled with a filmy sheen
Of gossamer, whereby a river rolled

His shrunken waters by a city old,

Leaving large space of poisonous ooze between The herbage and his waves, which were not clean, And in the air there was a touch of cold.

Then my thoughts troubled me, I knew not why;

But everything seemed still, and nought at rest. The sun grew dim, the faint wind seemed to sigh, The pale blue seemed to shiver as unblest, White fleecy clouds came scudding up the sky, And turned to ashen darkness in the west.

CCIV.

BEAUTY.

BEAUTY still walketh on the earth and air:
Our present sunsets are as rich in gold
As ere the Iliad's music was out-rolled,
The roses of the Spring are ever fair,

'Mong branches green still ring-doves coo and pair, And the deep sea still foams its music old;

So if we are at all divinely souled,

This beauty will unloose our bonds of care.

'Tis pleasant when blue skies are o'er us bending Within old starry-gated Poesy,

To meet a soul set to no worldly tune,

Like thine, sweet friend! Ah, dearer this to me

Than are the dewy trees, the sun, the moon,

Or noble music with a golden ending.

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