Yes, well have I subdued my life! beyond The obligation of my strictest vow, The contemplation of my wildest bond, Which gave my nature freely up, in truth, But in its actual state, consenting fully All passionate impulses its soil was formed To rear, should wither; but foreseeing not The tract, doomed to perpetual barrenness, Would seem one day, remembered as it was, Beside the parched sand-waste which now it is, Already strewn with faint blooms, viewless then. I ne'er engaged to root up loves so frail I felt them not; yet now, 't is very plain Some soft spots had their birth in me at first, If not love, say, like love: there was a time When yet this wolfish hunger after knowledge Set not remorselessly love's claims aside. This heart was human once, or why recall Einsiedeln, now, and Würzburg which the Mayne Forsakes her course to fold as with an arm? And Festus--my poor Festus, with his praise And counsel and grave fears--where is he now With the sweet maiden, long ago his bride? I surely loved them--that last night, at least, When we ... gone! gone! the better. I am saved The sad review of an ambitious youth Choked by vile lusts, unnoticed in their birth, But let grow up and wind around a will Till action was destroyed. No, I have gone Purging my path successively of aught Wearing the distinct likeness of such lusts. I have made life consist of one idea: Ere that was master, up till that was born, I bear a memory of a pleasant life Whose small events I treasure; till one morn I ran o'er the seven little grassy fields, Startling the flocks of nameless birds, to tell Poor Festus, leaping all the while for joy, To leave all trouble for my future plans, Since I had just determined to become The greatest and most glorious man on earth. And since that morn all life has been forgotten: All is one day, one only step between The outset and the end: one tyrant all- Absorbing aim fills up the interspace, One vast unbroken chain of thought, kept up Through a career apparently adverse To its existence: life, death, light and shadow, The shows of the world, were bare receptacles Or indices of truth to be wrung thence, Not ministers of sorrow or delight: A wondrous natural robe in which she went. For some one truth would dimly beacon me From mountains rough with pines, and flit and wink O'er dazzling wastes of frozen snow, and tremble Into assured light in some branching mine Where ripens, swathed in fire, the liquid gold-- And all the beauty, all the wonder fell On either side the truth, as its mere robe; I see the robe now--then I saw the form. So far, then, I have voyaged with success, So much is good, then, in this working sea Which parts me from that happy strip of land: