This restlessness of passion meets in me A craving after knowledge: the sole proof Of yet commanding will is in that power Repressed; for I beheld it in its dawn, The sleepless harpy with just-budding wings, And I considered whether to forego All happy ignorant hopes and fears, to live, Finding a recompense in its wild eyes. And when I found that I should perish so, I bade its wild eyes close from me forever, And I am left alone with old delights; See! it lies in me a chained thing, still prompt To serve me if I loose its slightest bond: I cannot but be proud of my bright slave. How should this earth's life prove my only sphere? Can I so narrow sense but that in life Soul still exceeds it? In their elements My love outsoars my reason; but since love Perforce receives its object from this earth While reason wanders chainless, the few truths Caught from its wanderings have sufficed to quell Love chained below; then what were love, set free, Which, with the object it demands, would pass Reason companioning the seraphim? No, what I feel may pass all human love Yet fall far short of what my love should be. And yet I seem more warped in this than aught, Myself stands out more hideously: of old I could forget myself in friendship, fame, Liberty, nay, in love of mightier souls; But I begin to know what thing hate is-- To sicken and to quiver and grow white-- And I myself have furnished its first prey. Hate of the weak and ever-wavering will, The selfishness, the still-decaying frame ... But I must never grieve whom wing can waft Far from such thoughts--as now. Andromeda! And she is with me: years roll, I shall change, But change can touch her not--so beautiful With her fixed eyes, earnest and still, and hair Lifted and spread by the salt-sweeping breeze, And one red beam, all the storm leaves in heaven, Resting upon her eyes and hair, such hair, As she awaits the snake on the wet beach By the dark rock and the white wave just breaking At her feet; quite naked and alone; a thing I doubt not, nor fear for, secure some god To save will come in thunder from the stars. Let it pass! Soul requires another change. I will be gifted with a wondrous mind, Yet sunk by error to men's sympathy, And in the wane of life, yet only so As to call up their fears; and there shall come A time requiring youth's best energies; And lo, I fling age, sorrow, sickness off, And rise triumphant, triumph through decay. And thus it is that I supply the chasm 'Twixt what I am and all I fain would be: But then to know nothing, to hope for nothing, To seize on life's dull joys from a strange fear Lest, losing them, all's lost and naught remains!