After Paradise or Legends of Exile With Other Poems: By Robert, Earl of Lytton (Owen Meredith) |
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 | After Paradise or Legends of Exile |  |
All other loss comparison avails
To lessen, and all other ills worse ill
May mitigate. Defeated monarchs find
Cold comfort left in Cæsar's legions lost:
The ruin'd merchant in the bankrupt State:
The bedless beggar in the bed-rid lord.
The sight of Niobe dries many tears,
And by the side of open graves are graves
Long seal'd, like old wounds cicatrised by time.
But this is an immitigable ill,
A lastingly incomparable loss,
A forfeiture of refuge that exiles
Its victim even from the lonest lodge
Where Misery's leprous outcasts may at least
Commiserate each other. The excess
Of one o'erweening moment hath ursurpt
The whole dominion of eternity;
Yet even the usurpation was a fraud,
For what seem'd all was nothing; and its dupes,
Who mourn that moment's loss, have with it lost
The right to say that it was ever theirs. [OMITTED]
To lessen, and all other ills worse ill
May mitigate. Defeated monarchs find
Cold comfort left in Cæsar's legions lost:
The ruin'd merchant in the bankrupt State:
The bedless beggar in the bed-rid lord.
The sight of Niobe dries many tears,
And by the side of open graves are graves
Long seal'd, like old wounds cicatrised by time.
But this is an immitigable ill,
A lastingly incomparable loss,
A forfeiture of refuge that exiles
Its victim even from the lonest lodge
219
Commiserate each other. The excess
Of one o'erweening moment hath ursurpt
The whole dominion of eternity;
Yet even the usurpation was a fraud,
For what seem'd all was nothing; and its dupes,
Who mourn that moment's loss, have with it lost
The right to say that it was ever theirs. [OMITTED]
| After Paradise or Legends of Exile | |