"He alas, the changing lodgings, And the pranks of days of yore Has forgot for rural comforts And for the quiet of a home." 15. And this too when these same "rural comforts" he now regrets to have taken in exchange for his wanderings were the very circumstances he sighed for when he did lead the free life he now envies the gypsies for. For this is what he then had been singing: "Mayhap not long am destined I In exile peaceful to remain, Of dear days of yore to sigh And rustic muse in quiet With spirit calm to pursue. "But even far, in a foreign land In thought forever roam I shall Around Trimountain mine: By meadows, river, by its hills, By garden, linden, nigh the house." 16. No wonder, therefore, that the demon, having unsettled the poet's soul with restlessness, should now unsettle his reasoning powers with regrets. For regret is at bottom a disease, an inability to perceive that the best way to mend harm once done is not in lamenting the past, but in struggling for a future; in which future much of the past could be undone; or if it could not be undone, at least it could be prevented from contaminating with its corpse the life of the future. And his regret is bitter enough. In the first of the two poems, "Regret" and "Reminiscence," the feeling again is as yet only discernment; but in the second, the poison has already entered his soul, and accordingly it no longer is a song, but a cry of agony.... At first it is is only-- "But where are ye, O moments tender Of young my hopes, of heartfelt peace? The former heat and grace of inspiration? Come again, O ye, of spring my years!" But later it becomes-- "Before me memory in silence Its lengthy roll unfolds, And with disgust my life I reading Tremble I and curse it. Bitterly I moan, and bitterly my tears I shed But wash away the lines of grief I cannot. In laziness, in senseless feasts, In the madness of ruinous license, In thraldom, poverty, and homeless deserts My wasted years there I behold...." 17. Regret, in itself a disease, but only of the intellect, soon changes into a more violent disease: into a disease of the constitution, which is fear, fear of insanity. In ordinary minds such disease takes the form of fear for the future, of worry for existence; in extraordinary minds it takes more ghastly shapes,--distrust of friends, and dread of the close embrace of what is already stretching forth its claws after the soul,--insanity. Hence,-- "God grant I grow not insane: No, better the stick and beggar's bag; No, better toil and hunger bear. . . . . . . . . . . If crazy once, A fright thou art like pestilence, And locked up now shalt thou be. "To a chain thee, fool, they 'll fasten And through the gate, a circus beast, Thee to nettle the people come.