I. PART I.
1.
“Blind, blind is fate! unjust and hard my lot,
Who bear the burden of oblivious days
Unnoticed and uncheer'd from spot to spot
By dull and difficult ways!
How enviably doth the blissful bird
Bathe her free life in sunshine and sweet air,
Earth's lightest elements, and undeterr'd
Roam the wide welkin! There
Sublime she wanders with delighted mind
Thro' heaven's high glories—I but guess, debarr'd
From contemplation of them. Fate is blind,
Unjust my lot, and hard!”
2.
Thus, tired by slow and weary pilgrimage
Along a short, smooth, easy road, complain'd
A Tortoise; resting ere the last long stage
To his near goal was gain'd.
Head, feet, and tail i' the dust, he lay spread out
Self-crucified, a star that no light gave.
Deep-buried in himself, he bore about
His own life's living grave.
Yet dream'd he ever of a great existence,
Where, in lone lorddom over sea and land,
Sun-crown'd and girdled with the azure distance
The monarch mountains stand.
3.
Then suddenly the ambitious dreamer found
His sordid life uplifted. Like his mind
Sublime his body soar'd. His native ground
Sank as he rose i' the wind.
And underneath the wide world opens round him.
The silvery windings of the waters shine
Like little sinuous snakes. No limits bound him
Save the broad heavens divine.
The sprawling woods that seem'd immeasurable
Clump themselves into definite dark shapes.
The light green meadows lengthen. Skyward swell
Grey curves of mountain capes.
Deep in cold hollows of extinguisht fire
Sleep the intense blue tarns. Sharp points of snow
Glitter, and valleys green with ice-fields, higher
Than other green things grow.
The pure caress of airs, tho' keen not harsh,
Cool in the calm of that etherial height
Fan the delighted dweller of the marsh,
Thrill'd by unwonted flight.
A second Ganymede some second Jove,
Seeking for beauty here on earth misknown,
In him hath haply found, and borne above
To the Olympian Throne.
So deem'd the dupe of his own blind ambition,
And cried, “O my prophetic soul, at last
The Gods repent! Accepting Fate's contrition,
I do forgive the past.”
