Cool citrine-crystals, fierce pyropus-stone, Are floor-work there! But do I let alone That black-eyed peasant in the vestibule Once and forever?--Floor-work? No such fool! Rather, were heaven to forestall earth, I'd say I, is it, must be blessed? Then, my own way [Sidenote: And accepting life on its own terms,] Bless me! Give firmer arm and fleeter foot, I 'll thank you: but to no mad wings transmute These limbs of mine--our greensward was so soft! Nor camp I on the thunder-cloud aloft: We feel the bliss distinctlier, having thus Engines subservient, not mixed up with us. Better move palpably through heaven: nor, freed Of flesh, forsooth, from space to space proceed 'Mid flying synods of worlds! No: in heaven's marge Show Titan still, recumbent o'er his targe Solid with stars--the Centaur at his game, Made tremulously out in hoary flame! "Life! Yet the very cup whose extreme dull Dregs, even, I would quaff, was dashed, at full, Aside so oft; the death I fly, revealed So oft a better life this life concealed, And which sage, champion, martyr, through each path [Sidenote: Which, yet, others have renounced: how?] Have hunted fearlessly--the horrid bath, The crippling-irons and the fiery chair. 'T was well for them; let me become aware As they, and I relinquish life, too! Let What masters life disclose itself! Forget Vain ordinances, I have one appeal-- I feel, am what I feel, know what I feel; So much is truth to me. What Is, then? Since One object, viewed diversely, may evince Beauty and ugliness--this way attract, That way repel,--why gloze upon the fact? Why must a single of the sides be right? What bids choose this and leave the opposite? Where's abstract Right for me?--in youth endued With Right still present, still to be pursued, Through all the interchange of circles, rife Each with its proper law and mode of life, Each to be dwelt at ease in: where, to sway Absolute with the Kaiser, or obey Implicit with his serf of fluttering heart, Or, like a sudden thought of God's, to start Up, Brutus in the presence, then go shout That some should pick the unstrung jewels out-- Each, well!" And, as in moments when the past Gave partially enfranchisement, he cast Himself quite through mere secondary states Of his soul's essence, little loves and hates, [Sidenote: Because there is a life beyond life,] Into the mid deep yearnings overlaid By these; as who should pierce hill, plain, grove, glade, And on into the very nucleus probe That first determined there exist a globe. As that were easiest, half the globe dissolved, So seemed Sordello's closing-truth evolved By his flesh-half's break up; the sudden swell Of his expanding soul showed Ill and Well,