Above, and merry,--all his waving mesh Laughing with lucid dew-drops rainbow-edged. This world of ours by tacit pact is pledged To laying such a spangled fabric low Whether by gradual brush or gallant blow. But its abundant will was balked here: doubt [Sidenote: Being secure awhile from intrusion.] Rose tardily in one so fenced about From most that nurtures judgment, care and pain: Judgment, that dull expedient we are fain, Less favored, to adopt betimes and force Stead us, diverted from our natural course Of joys--contrive some yet amid the dearth, Vary and render them, it may be, worth Most we forego. Suppose Sordello hence Selfish enough, without a moral sense However feeble; what informed the boy Others desired a portion in his joy? Or say a ruthful chance broke woof and warp-- A heron's nest beat down by March winds sharp, A fawn breathless beneath the precipice, A bird with unsoiled breast and unfilmed eyes Warm in the brake--could these undo the trance Lapping Sordello? Not a circumstance That makes for you, friend Naddo! Eat fern-seed And peer beside us and report indeed If (your word) "genius" dawned with throes and stings And the whole fiery catalogue, while springs, Summers and winters quietly came and went. Time put at length that period to content, By right the world should have imposed: bereft Of its good offices, Sordello, left To study his companions, managed rip Their fringe off, learn the true relationship, Core with its crust, their nature with his own: Amid his wild-wood sights he lived alone. As if the poppy felt with him! Though he Partook the poppy's red effrontery Till Autumn spoiled their fleering quite with rain, And, turbanless, a coarse brown rattling crane Lay bare. That 's gone: yet why renounce, for that, His disenchanted tributaries--flat Perhaps, but scarce so utterly forlorn, Their simple presence might not well be borne Whose parley was a transport once: recall The poppy's gifts, it flaunts you, after all, A poppy:--why distrust the evidence Of each soon satisfied and healthy sense? [Sidenote: But it comes; and new-born judgment] The new-born judgment answered, "little boots Beholding other creatures' attributes And having none!" or, say that it sufficed, "Yet, could one but possess, one's self," (enticed Judgment) "some special office!" Naught beside Serves you? "Well then, be somehow justified For this ignoble wish to circumscribe And concentrate, rather than swell, the tribe Of actual pleasures: what, now, from without Effects it?--proves, despite a lurking doubt, Mere sympathy sufficient, trouble spared? That, tasting joys by proxy thus, you fared [Sidenote: Decides that he needs sympathizers.]