Parading,--to the gay Palermitans, Soft Messinese, dusk Saracenic clans [Sidenote: Having multifarious sympathies,] Nuocera holds,--those tall grave dazzling Norse, High-cheeked, lank-haired, toothed whiter than the morse, Queens of the caves of jet stalactites, He sent his barks to fetch through icy seas, The blind night seas without a saving star, And here in snowy birdskin robes they are, Sordello!--here, mollitious alcoves gilt Superb as Byzant domes that devils built! --Ah, Byzant, there again! no chance to go Ever like august cheery Dandolo, Worshipping hearts about him for a wall, Conducted, blind eyes, hundred years and all, Through vanquished Byzant where friends note for him What pillar, marble massive, sardius slim, 'T were fittest he transport to Venice' Square-- Flattered and promised life to touch them there Soon, by those fervid sons of senators! No more lifes, deaths, loves, hatreds, peaces, wars! Ah, fragments of a whole ordained to be, Points in the life I waited! what are ye But roundels of a ladder which appeared Awhile the very platform it was reared To lift me on?--that happiness I find Proofs of my faith in, even in the blind Instinct which bade forego you all unless Ye led me past yourselves. Ay, happiness [Sidenote: He may neither renounce nor satisfy;] Awaited me; the way life should be used Was to acquire, and deeds like you conduced To teach it by a self-revealment, deemed Life's very use, so long! Whatever seemed Progress to that, was pleasure; aught that stayed My reaching it--no pleasure. I have laid The ladder down; I climb not; still, aloft The platform stretches! Blisses strong and soft, I dared not entertain, elude me; yet Never of what they promised could I get A glimpse till now! The common sort, the crowd, Exist, perceive; with Being are endowed, However slight, distinct from what they See, However bounded; Happiness must be, To feed the first by gleanings from the last, Attain its qualities, and slow or fast Become what they behold; such peace-in-strife By transmutation, is the Use of Life, The Alien turning Native to the soul Or body--which instructs me; I am whole There and demand a Palma; had the world Been from my soul to a like distance hurled, 'T were Happiness to make it one with me: Whereas I must, ere I begin to Be, Include a world, in flesh, I comprehend In spirit now; and this done, what 's to blend With? Naught is Alien in the world--my Will [Sidenote: In the process to which is pleasure,] Owns all already; yet can turn it--still Less--Native, since my Means to correspond With Will are so unworthy, 't was my bond To tread the very joys that tantalize Most now, into a grave, never to rise.