Ages of Progress! These eight hundred Years Hath Europe shuddered with her Hopes or Fears, And now!—she listens in the Wilderness To _thee_, and half believeth what she hears! Hadst _thou_ THE SECRET? Ah, and who may tell? “An Hour we have,” thou saidst; “Ah, waste it well!” An Hour we have, and yet Eternity Looms o’er us, and the Thought of Heaven or Hell! Nay, we can never be as wise as thou, O idle Singer ’neath the blossomed Bough. Nay, and we cannot be content to die. _We_ cannot shirk the Questions “Where?” and “How?” Ah, not from learned Peace and gay Content Shall we of England go the way _he_ went— The Singer of the Red Wine and the Rose— Nay, otherwise than _his_ our Day is spent! Serene he dwelt in fragrant Nashâpûr, But we must wander while the Stars endure. _He_ knew THE SECRET: we have none that knows, No Man so sure as Omar once was sure! XXII. _To Q. Horatius Flaccus_. IN what manner of Paradise are we to conceive that you, Horace, are dwelling, or what region of immortality can give you such pleasures as this life afforded? The country and the town, nature and men, who knew them so well as you, or who ever so wisely made the best of those two worlds? Truly here you had good things, nor do you ever, in all your poems, look for more delight in the life beyond; you never expect consolation for present sorrow, and when you once have shaken hands with a friend the parting seems to you eternal. Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus Tam cari capitis?