A Lost Path
Plotinus, the Greek philosopher, had a certain proper mode of ecstasy,
whereby, as Porphyry saith, his soul, becoming free from his deathly
flesh, was made one with the Spirit that is in the world.
Alas, the path is lost! we cannot leave
Our bright, our clouded life, and pass away
As through strewn clouds that stain the quiet eve,
To heights remoter of the purer day.
The soul may not, returning whence she came,
Bathe herself deep in being, and forget
The joys that fever, and the cares that fret,
Made once more one with the eternal flame
That breathes in all things ever more the same.
She would be young again, thus drinking deep
Of her old life; and this has been, men say,
But this we know not, who have only sleep
To soothe us—sleep more terrible than day—
Where dead delights, and fair lost faces stray,
To make us weary at our wakening;
And of that long-lost path to the Divine
We dream, as some Greek shepherd erst might sing,
Half credulous, of easy Proserpine,
And of the lands that lie ‘beneath the day's decline’.
