CXXIV.
We wither from our youth, we gasp away -
Sick--sick; unfound the boon, unslaked the thirst,
Though to the last, in verge of our decay,
Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first -
But all too late,--so are we doubly curst.
Love, fame, ambition, avarice--'tis the same -
Each idle, and all ill, and none the worst -
For all are meteors with a different name,
And death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.
CXXV.
Few--none--find what they love or could have loved:
Though accident, blind contact, and the strong
Necessity of loving, have removed
Antipathies--but to recur, ere long,
Envenomed with irrevocable wrong;
And Circumstance, that unspiritual god
And miscreator, makes and helps along
Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,
Whose touch turns hope to dust--the dust we all have trod.
CXXVI.
Our life is a false nature--'tis not in
The harmony of things,--this hard decree,
This uneradicable taint of sin,
This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree,
Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be
The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew -
Disease, death, bondage, all the woes we see--
And worse, the woes we see not--which throb through
The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new.
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