Poems of James Clarence Mangan (Many hitherto uncollected): Centenary edition: Edited, with preface and notes by D. J. O'Donoghue: Introduction by John Mitchel |
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| II. |
 | III. |
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LIFE. |
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| VII. |
 | Poems of James Clarence Mangan |  |
LIFE.
O human destiny! thou art a mysteryWhich tasks the o'er-wearied intellect in vain;
A world thou art of cabalistic history
Whose lessons madden and destroy the brain,
O Life!—whose page, a necromantic scroll,
Is charactered with sentences of terror
Which, like the shapes on a magician's mirror,
At once bewilder and appal the soul—
We blindly roam thy labyrinth of error,
And clasp a phantom when we gain thy goal!
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Thy base wrecks to the whirlgulfs of the past—
But Man and Heaven will bless thee if thou hast
Spared for their final sphere the Noble and the Fair.
| Poems of James Clarence Mangan | |