Can it be possible that thou desertest Thy love, thy ward, the work of three long years, Because chance, on an April holiday Has filled this boy's talk with another man, And wonder at another way of life? Worse than a woman's is such jealousy; The lad must live! Delphis: Live, live! to be sure, he must live! I have lived, am a fool for my pains! And yet, and yet, This heart has ached to play the god for him:-- Mine eyes for his had sifted visible things; Speech had been filtered ere it reached his ear; Not in the world should he have lived, but breathed Humanity's distilled quintessences; The indiscriminate multitude sorted should yield him Acquaintance and friend discerned, chosen by me:-- By me, who failed, wrecked my youth's prime, and dragged More wonderful than his gifts in the mire! Damon: Yet if experience could not teach and save Others from ignorance, why, towns would be Ruins, and civil men like outlaws thieve, Stab, riot, ere two generations passed. Delphis: Where is the Athens that Pericles loved? Where are the youths that were Socrates' friends? There was a town where all learnt What the wisest had taught! Why had crude Sparta such treasonous force? Could Philip of Macedon Breed a true Greek of his son? What honour to conquer a world Where Alcibiades failed, Lead half-drilled highland hordes Whose lust would inherit the wise? There is nothing art's industry shaped But their idleness praising it mocked. Thus Fate re-assumed her command And laughed at experienced law. What ails man to love with such pains? Why toil to create in the mind Of those who shall close in his grave The best that he is and has hoped? The longer permission he has, The nobler the structure so raised, The greater its downfall. Fools, fools, Where is a town such as Pericles ruled? Where youths to replace those whom Socrates loved? Wise Damon, thou art silent;--Mother, thou Hast only arms to cling about thy son.-- Who can descry the purpose of a god With eyes wide-open? shut them, every fool Can conjure up a world arriving somewhere, Resulting in what he may call perfection. Evil must soon or late succeed to good. There well may once have been a golden age: Why should we treat it as a poet's tale? Yet, in those hills that hung o'er Arcady, Some roving inebriate Daimon Begat him fair children On nymphs of the vineyard, On nymphs of the rock:-- And in the heart of the forest Lay bound in white arms, In action creative a father Without a thought for his child:-- A purposeless god, The forbear of men To corrupt, ape, inherit and spoil That fine race beforehand with doom!