I marvel not at him who scorns his kind And thinks not sadly of the time foretold When the old hulk we tread shall be a wreck, A slag, a cinder drifting through the sky Without its crew of fools! We live too long And even so are not content to die, But load the mould that covers up our bones With stones that stand like beggars by the road And show death's grievous wound and ask for tears; Write our great books to teach men who we are, Sing our fine songs that tell in artful phrase The secrets of our lives, and plead and pray For alms of memory with the after time, Those few swift seasons while the earth shall wear Its leafy summers, ere its core grows cold And the moist life of all that breathes shall die; Or as the new-born seer, perchance more wise, Would have us deem, before its growing mass, Pelted with stardust, atoned with meteor-balls, Heats like a hammered anvil, till at last Man and his works and all that stirred itself Of its own motion, in the fiery glow Turns to a flaming vapor, and our orb Shines a new sun for earths that shall be born. I am as old as Egypt to myself, Brother to them that squared the pyramids By the same stars I watch. I read the page Where every letter is a glittering world, With them who looked from Shinar's clay-built towers, Ere yet the wanderer of the Midland sea Had missed the fallen sister of the seven. I dwell in spaces vague, remote, unknown, Save to the silent few, who, leaving earth, Quit all communion with their living time. I lose myself in that ethereal void, Till I have tired my wings and long to fill My breast with denser air, to stand, to walk With eyes not raised above my fellow-men. Sick of my unwalled, solitary realm, I ask to change the myriad lifeless worlds I visit as mine own for one poor patch Of this dull spheroid and a little breath To shape in word or deed to serve my kind. Was ever giant's dungeon dug so deep, Was ever tyrant's fetter forged so strong, Was e'er such deadly poison in the draught The false wife mingles for the trusting fool, As he whose willing victim is himself, Digs, forges, mingles, for his captive soul? VII I was very sure that the old Master was hard at work about something,--he is always very busy with something,--but I mean something particular.