So long! afar through Time He bent His mind, For the beginning, which He could not find, Through endless centuries and backwards still Endless for ever, till His 'stonied will Halted in circles, dizzied in the swing Of mazy nothingness.--His mind could bring Not to subjection, grip or hold the theme Whose wide horizon melted like a dream To thinnest edges. Infinite behind The piling centuries were trodden blind In gulfs chaotic--so He could not see When He was not who always had To Be. Not even godly fortitude can stare Into Eternity, nor easy bear The insolent vacuity of Time: It is too much, the mind can never climb Up to its meaning, for, without an end, Without beginning, plan, or scope, or trend To point a path, there nothing is to hold And steady surmise: so the mind is rolled And swayed and drowned in dull Immensity. Eternity outfaces even Me With its indifference, and the fruitless year Would swing as fruitless were I never here. And so for ever, day and night the same, Years flying swiftly nowhere, like a game Played random by a madman, without end Or any reasoned object but to spend What is unspendable--Eternal Woe! O Weariness of Time that fast or slow Goes never further, never has in view An ending to the thing it seeks to do, And so does nothing: merely ebb and flow, From nowhere into nowhere, touching so The shores of many stars and passing on, Careless of what may come or what has gone. O solitude unspeakable! to be For ever with oneself! never to see An equal face, or feel an equal hand, To sit in state and issue reprimand, Admonishment or glory, and to smile Disdaining what has happened the while! O to be breast to breast against a foe! Against a friend! to strive and not to know The laboured outcome: love nor be aware How much the other loved, and greatly care With passion for that happy love or hate, Nor know what joy or dole was hid in fate, For I have ranged the spacy width and gone Swift north and south, striving to look upon An ending somewhere. Many days I sped Hard to the west, a thousand years I fled Eastwards in fury, but I could not find The fringes of the Infinite. Behind And yet behind, and ever at the end Came new beginnings, paths that did not wend To anywhere were there: and ever vast And vaster spaces opened--till at last Dizzied with distance, thrilling to a pain Unnameable, I turned to Heaven again. And there My angels were prepared to fling The cloudy incense, there prepared to sing My praise and glory--O, in fury I Then roared them senseless, then threw down the sky And stamped upon it, buffeted a star With My great fist, and flung the sun afar: Shouted My anger till the mighty sound Rung to the width, frighting the furthest bound And scope of hearing: tumult vaster still, Thronging the echo, dinned My ears, until I fled in silence, seeking out a place To hide Me from the very thought of Space.