 | Odes and Eclogves |  |
1
ODE ON CONFLICTING CLAIMS
Hast thou no right to joy,
Oh youth grown old, who palest with the thought
Of the measureless annoy,
The pain and havoc wrought
By Fate on man: and of the many men,
The unfed, the untaught,
Who groan beneath that adamantine chain
Whose tightness kills, whose slackness whips the flow
Of waves of futile woe:
Hast thou no right to joy?
Oh youth grown old, who palest with the thought
Of the measureless annoy,
The pain and havoc wrought
By Fate on man: and of the many men,
The unfed, the untaught,
Who groan beneath that adamantine chain
Whose tightness kills, whose slackness whips the flow
Of waves of futile woe:
Hast thou no right to joy?
2
Thou thinkest in thy mind
In thee it were unkind
To revel in the liquid Hyblian store,
While more and more the horror and the shame,
The pity and the woe grow more and more,
Persistent still to claim
The filling of thy mind.
In thee it were unkind
To revel in the liquid Hyblian store,
While more and more the horror and the shame,
The pity and the woe grow more and more,
Persistent still to claim
The filling of thy mind.
Thou thinkest that if none in all the rout
Who compass thee about
Turn full their soul to that which thou desirest,
Nor seek to gain thy goal,
Beauty, the heart of beauty,
The sweetness, yea, the thoughtful sweetness,
The one right way in each, the best,
Which satisfies the soul,
The firmness lost in softness, the touch of typical meetness,
Which lets the soul have rest;
Those things to which thyself aspirest:—
That they, though born to quaff the bowl divine,
As thou art, yield to the strict law of duty;
And thou from them must thine example take,
Leave the amaranthine vine,
And the prized joy forsake.
Who compass thee about
Turn full their soul to that which thou desirest,
Nor seek to gain thy goal,
Beauty, the heart of beauty,
The sweetness, yea, the thoughtful sweetness,
The one right way in each, the best,
Which satisfies the soul,
3
Which lets the soul have rest;
Those things to which thyself aspirest:—
That they, though born to quaff the bowl divine,
As thou art, yield to the strict law of duty;
And thou from them must thine example take,
Leave the amaranthine vine,
And the prized joy forsake.
Oh thou, foregone in this,
Long struggling with a world that is amiss,
Reach some old volume down,
Some poet's book, which in thy bygone years
Thou hast consumed with joys as keen as fears,
When o'er it thou wouldst hang with rapturous frown,
Admiring with sweet envy all
The exquisite of words, the lance-like fall
Of mighty verses, each on each,
The sweetness which did never cloy,
(So wrought of thought ere touched with speech),
And ask again, Hast thou no right to joy.
Take the most precious tones that thunder-struck thine ears
In gentler days gone by:
And if they yield no more the old ecstasy,
Then give thyself to tears.
Long struggling with a world that is amiss,
Reach some old volume down,
Some poet's book, which in thy bygone years
Thou hast consumed with joys as keen as fears,
When o'er it thou wouldst hang with rapturous frown,
Admiring with sweet envy all
4
Of mighty verses, each on each,
The sweetness which did never cloy,
(So wrought of thought ere touched with speech),
And ask again, Hast thou no right to joy.
Take the most precious tones that thunder-struck thine ears
In gentler days gone by:
And if they yield no more the old ecstasy,
Then give thyself to tears.
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