“Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance, While we keep a little breath! Drink to heavy Ignorance! Hob-and-nob with brother Death! “Thou art mazed, the night is long, And the longer night is near: What! I am not all as wrong As a bitter jest is dear. “Youthful hopes, by scores, to all, When the locks are crisp and curl’d; Unto me my maudlin gall And my mockeries of the world. “Fill the cup, and fill the can! Mingle madness, mingle scorn! Dregs of life, and lees of man: Yet we will not die forlorn.” 5 The voice grew faint: there came a further change: Once more uprose the mystic mountain-range: Below were men and horses pierced with worms, And slowly quickening into lower forms; By shards and scurf of salt, and scum of dross, Old plash of rains, and refuse patch’d with moss, Then some one spake[6]: “Behold! it was a crime Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time”. [7]Another said: “The crime of sense became The crime of malice, and is equal blame”. And one: “He had not wholly quench’d his power; A little grain of conscience made him sour”. At last I heard a voice upon the slope Cry to the summit, “Is there any hope?” To which an answer peal’d from that high land. But in a tongue no man could understand; And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn God made Himself an awful rose of dawn.[8] [1] A reference to the famous passage in the _Phoedrus_ where Plato compares the soul to a chariot drawn by the two-winged steeds. [2] Imitated apparently from the dance in Shelley’s _Triumph of Life_:— The wild dance maddens in the van; and those ... Mix with each other in tempestuous measure To savage music, wilder as it grows. They, tortur’d by their agonising pleasure, Convuls’d, and on the rapid whirlwinds spun ... Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air. As their feet twinkle, etc. [3] See footnote to last line. [4] All up to and including 1850 read:— Every _minute_ dies a man, Every _minute_ one is born. Mr. Babbage, the famous mathematician, is said to have addressed the following letter to Tennyson in reference to this couplet:— “I need hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend to keep the sum total of the world’s population in a state of perpetual equipoise, whereas it is a well-known fact that the said sum total is constantly on the increase. I would therefore take the liberty of suggesting that, in the next edition of your excellent poem, the erroneous calculation to which I refer should be corrected as follows:— Every moment dies a man, And one and a sixteenth is born. I may add that the exact figures are 1.167, but something must, of course, be conceded to the laws of metre.” [5] 1842 and 1843. The tyrant’s. [6] 1842. Said. [7] In the Selection published in 1865 Tennyson here inserted a couplet which he afterwards omitted:— Another answer’d: “But a crime of sense!” “Give him new nerves with old experience.”