Vigil and vision :: :: University of Virginia Library

I wander o'er the hills in lonely leisure;
Returning ever to the ancient ground,
Thought in my head still runs its endless round.
That which I prized of old no more I treasure;
In that which once I loved I have no pleasure:
Though still unchanged to touch and sight and sound,
In all I find no more what once I found;
Life's goods and ills I mete by other measure.
Since that for us, alas! the loss is certain,
Since no unthinkable enchanted goal
For us there waits behind the Future's curtain,
Such as might render to our shipwrecked soul
That which lost life from us hath year by year ta'en,
What for the loss shall of a world console?

2.

The tempest in my soul hath long subsided;
The winds have fallen calm, the waves are still;
Yet no sun comes hope's auspice to fulfil.
The light by which my spirit's bark I guided,
In whose direction I of old confided,
Whereby my way to steer 'twixt good and ill,
Is blotted out, nor aught for ever will
The hopes renew whereon I once abided.
No faith is left me in the olden story,
Which once my heart sufficed in every thing.
The light is faded from its golden glory;
Its holy memories have taken wing,
To their long home gone back in limbos hoary:
Doubt in the darkened soul of me is king.

3.

Much have I wrought, yet nought with me remaineth;
Long have I sought, yet nothing have in hand;
Far have I fared, yet never came to land.
How shall I do, whilst yet Life's light obtaineth,
The shores to reach where peace primæval reigneth,
As in some sea-pool on a summer-strand,
Through whose bright waters, on the golden sand,
A fairy scape of seaflowers waxeth, waneth?
Not one am I that from the Past can borrow,
To gild to-day, the light of days fordone,
Nor on some fair fallacious golden morrow
False faith can stablish: nay, I am as one
Yet living buried in a grave of sorrow,
Who seeks no more to look upon the sun.

4.

When Life's account I reckon, gains and losses,
It sickens me its unrequited slain
To count and see how many Christs in vain
Through this our changeless world have borne their crosses,
How many fighters perished in Life's fosses,
Whilst, with the old indifferent disdain,
Mankind upon its waves of strife and pain
From peak to peak the world-storm's torrent tosses.
Yet, as those bred and born in wars and slaughters
That sleep their dreamless sleep through fire and fight,
My consolation is that Lethe's waters
Have not yet lost their salutary might
The foolish hearts of Adam's sons and daughters
To solace with oblivion's dulcet night.

5.

Once consolation did I seek from Nature
For my sick soul; but now, alas! I know
That she no sympathy with man can show,
Heeds not his glee nor his distemperature,
But, from the cold heights of her Titan stature,
Indifferent down upon his joy and woe
Looks, as upon the plains that spread below
The snow-peaks gaze, with faces blank of feature.
Yet, in her summer woods, her wastes hybernal,
Quit is the spirit of men's idle prate:
In her snow-death, in her renascence vernal,
With the world's soul it holds communion strait
And hears the throbbing pulse of Time eternal
Measure the marches of foreordered Fate.

6.

Since thought as life is, fleeting as the wind,
What booteth it to drive one's barren furrow
Through the dumb Past or in Time's grave to burrow
For that which none this side of death to find
May hope? What saith the wisest of our kind,
“Increase of knowledge brings increase of sorrow;
“Availeth not thought-taking for the morrow;
“Unto much wisdom is much grief assigned”.
Since all must perish for the All's renewing,
Why waste for ever on thought's sterile fire?
Hearken no more to hope's fallacious wooing;
Cast stress and passion on life's funeral pyre.
This only thing on earth is worth th' ensuing,
Deliverance from the bondage of desire.

7.

Could we but look, indeed, in coming ages
New hope in a new world of things to find,
Yet might we live, to this our day resigned.
Alas! in all the Past's recurrent stages,
In every word of poets, prophets, sages,
We read the changeless future of our kind,
What lies before us that which is behind,
The Past rewritten in the Present's pages.
Only the thought that life is not for ever,
That at the last a time shall come to free
Our hearts and brains from sterile thought's endeavour
And hopeless hope, some solace hath for me.
Hiding my face in thine all-sheltering Never,
Eternity, be thou my sanctuary!

Senancour's last words.