CXXVI. Our life is a false nature-'tis not in This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree, dew Disease, death, bondage-all the woes we see - And worse, the woes we see not which throb through The immedicabe soul, with heart - aches ever new. CXXVII. Yet let us ponder boldly-'tis a base 57 Our right of thought-our last and only place The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind. CXXVIII. Arches on arches! as it were that Rome, Collecting the chief trophies of her line, Would build up all her triumphs in one dome, Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine As 'twere its natural torches, for divine Should be the light which streams here, to illume This long-explored but still exhaustless mine Of contemplation; and the azure gloom Of an Italian night, where the deep skies asume CXXIX. Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven, For which the palace of the present hour Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower. CXXX. Oh Time! the beautifier of the dead, And only healer when the heart hath bled For all beside are sophists, from thy thrift, My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift: CXXXI. Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine Among thy migthier offerings here are mine, Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne CXXXII. And thou, who never yet of human wrong Had it but been from hands less near-in this CXXXIII. It is not that I may not have incurr'd For my ancestral faults or mine the wound I bleed withal, and, had it been conferr'd With a just weapon, it had flow'd unbound; But now my blood shall not sink in the ground; To thee I do devote it thou shalt take The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found, Which if I have not taken for the sake But let that pass I sleep, but thou shalt yet awake CXXXIV. And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now I shrink from what is suffer'd: let him speak Who hath beheld decline upon my brow, Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak; But in this page a record will I seek Not in the air shall these my words disperse, Though I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak The deep prophetic fulness of this verse, And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse! CXXXV. That curse shall be Forgiveness.-Have I not Have I not suffer'd things to be forgiven? Because not altogether of such clay As rots into the souls of those whom I survey. |