From some high station he looks down, At sunset, on a populous town; Surveys each happy group which fleets, Toil ended, through the shining streets,-- Each with some errand of its own,-- And does not say, _I am alone_. He sees the gentle stir of birth When morning purifies the earth; He leans upon a gate, and sees The pastures, and the quiet trees. Low, woody hill, with gracious bound, Folds the still valley almost round; The cuckoo, loud on some high lawn, Is answered from the depth of dawn; In the hedge straggling to the stream, Pale, dew-drenched, half-shut roses gleam. But, where the farther side slopes down, He sees the drowsy new-waked clown In his white quaint-embroidered frock Make, whistling, toward his mist-wreathed flock, Slowly, behind his heavy tread, The wet, flowered grass heaves up its head. Leaned on his gate, he gazes: tears Are in his eyes, and in his ears The murmur of a thousand years. Before him he sees life unroll, A placid and continuous whole,-- That general life, which does not cease, Whose secret is not joy, but peace; That life, whose dumb wish is not missed If birth proceeds, if things subsist; The life of plants, and stones, and rain, The life he craves--if not in vain Fate gave, what chance shall not control, His sad lucidity of soul. You listen; but that wandering smile, Fausta, betrays you cold the while! Your eyes pursue the bells of foam Washed, eddying, from this bank, their home. _Those gypsies_--so your thoughts I scan-- _Are less, the poet more, than man_. _They feel not, though they move and see._ _Deeper the poet feels; but he_ _Breathes, when he will, immortal air,_ _Where Orpheus and where Homer are._ _In the day’s life, whose iron round_ _Hems us all in, he is not bound;_ _He leaves his kind, o’erleaps their pen,_ _And flees the common life of men._ _He escapes thence, but we abide._ _ Not deep the poet sees, but wide._ The world in which we live and move Outlasts aversion, outlasts love, Outlasts each effort, interest, hope, Remorse, grief, joy; and, were the scope Of these affections wider made, Man still would see, and see dismayed, Beyond his passion’s widest range, Far regions of eternal change. Nay, and since death, which wipes out man, Finds him with many an unsolved plan, With much unknown, and much untried, Wonder not dead, and thirst not dried, Still gazing on the ever full Eternal mundane spectacle,-- This world in which we draw our breath, In some sense, Fausta, outlasts death.