 | The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere |  |
233
XXVIII. RATIONALISM.
Notions of notions docketed and classed:Shadows self-chased along a barren ground:
Pale tracks of foam in wandering waves half-drowned:
Thin shreds of song half lost in winter's blast—
These starved and squalid Systems cannot last:
Vainly man's plummet the great deep would sound,
Man's arms enclose within their pigmy bound
Of sense, the Present, Future, and the Past.
Well skilled to trace the diagrams of thought,
Our modern Muse (with aid of compass) shines
In abstract lore of surfaces and lines;
Courses along Truth's limits; enters not;
Steps not across the threshold; dares not tread
The space within devote to God and to the dead!
| The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere | |