Pauline, my soul's friend, thou dost pity yet How this mood swayed me when that soul found thine, When I had set myself to live this life, Defying all past glory. Ere thou camest I seemed defiant, sweet, for old delights Had flocked like birds again; music, my life, Nourished me more than ever; then the lore Loved for itself and all it shows--that king Treading the purple calmly to his death, While round him, like the clouds of eve, all dusk, The giant shades of fate, silently flitting, Pile the dim outline of the coming doom; And him sitting alone in blood while friends Are hunting far in the sunshine; and the boy With his white breast and brow and clustering curls Streaked with his mother's blood, but striving hard To tell his story ere his reason goes. And when I loved thee as love seemed so oft, Thou lovedst me indeed: I wondering searched My heart to find some feeling like such love, Believing I was still much I had been. Too soon I found all faith had gone from me, And the late glow of life, like change on clouds, Proved not the morn-blush widening into day, But eve faint-colored by the dying sun While darkness hastens quickly. I will tell My state as though 't were none of mine--despair Cannot come near us--this it is, my state. Souls alter not, and mine must still advance; Strange that I knew not, when I flung away My youth's chief aims, their loss might lead to loss Of what few I retained, and no resource Be left me: for behold how changed is all! I cannot chain my soul: it will not rest In its clay prison, this most narrow sphere: It has strange impulse, tendency, desire, Which nowise I account for nor explain, But cannot stifle, being bound to trust All feelings equally, to hear all sides: How can my life indulge them? yet they live, Referring to some state of life unknown. My selfishness is satiated not, It wears me like a flame; my hunger for All pleasure, howsoe'er minute, grows pain; I envy--how I envy him whose soul Turns its whole energies to some one end, To elevate an aim, pursue success However mean! So, my still baffled hope Seeks out abstractions; I would have one joy, But one in life, so it were wholly mine, One rapture all my soul could fill: and this Wild feeling places me in dream afar In some vast country where the eye can see No end to the far hills and dales bestrewn With shining towers and towns, till I grow mad Well-nigh, to know not one abode but holds Some pleasure, while my soul could grasp the world, But must remain this vile form's slave. I look With hope to age at last, which quenching much, May let me concentrate what sparks it spares.