Blame thou not, therefore, him who dares Judge vain beforehand human cares; Whose natural insight can discern What through experience others learn; Who needs not love and power, to know Love transient, power an unreal show; Who treads at ease life’s uncheered ways: Him blame not, Fausta, rather praise! Rather thyself for some aim pray, Nobler than this, to fill the day; Rather that heart, which burns in thee, Ask, not to amuse, but to set free; Be passionate hopes not ill resigned For quiet, and a fearless mind. And though fate grudge to thee and me The poet’s rapt security, Yet they, believe me, who await No gifts from chance, have conquered fate. They, winning room to see and hear, And to men’s business not too near, Through clouds of individual strife Draw homeward to the general life. Like leaves by suns not yet uncurled; To the wise, foolish; to the world, Weak: yet not weak, I might reply, Not foolish, Fausta, in His eye, To whom each moment in its race, Crowd as we will its neutral space, Is but a quiet watershed Whence, equally, the seas of life and death are fed. Enough, we live! and if a life With large results so little rife, Though bearable, seem hardly worth This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth; Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread, The solemn hills around us spread, This stream which falls incessantly, The strange-scrawled rocks, the lonely sky, If I might lend their life a voice, Seem to bear rather than rejoice. And even could the intemperate prayer Man iterates, while these forbear, For movement, for an ampler sphere, Pierce Fate’s impenetrable ear; Not milder is the general lot Because our spirits have forgot, In action’s dizzying eddy whirled, The something that infects the world. NARRATIVE POEMS. _SOHRAB AND RUSTUM._[5] AN EPISODE.