Great Natures, Arden, thy strange lot to know And lose!--twin souls thy mistress and thy foe! How flash'd they, high and starry, through the dull World's reeking air--earnest and beautiful! Erring perchance, and yet divinely blind, Such hero errors purify our kind! One noble fault that springs from SELF'S disdain May oft more grace in Angel eyes obtain, Than a whole life, without a seeming flaw, Which served but Heaven, because of Earth in awe, Which in each act has loss or profit weigh'd, And kept with Virtue the accounts of Trade! He too was born, lost Idler, to be great, The sins that dwarf'd, he had a soul to hate. Ambition, Ease, Example had beguiled, And our base world in fawning had defiled; Yet still, contrasting all he _did_, he _dream'd_; And through the Wordling's life the Poet gleam'd. His eye not blind to Virtue; to his ear Still spoke the music of the banish'd sphere; Still in his thought the Ideal, though obscured, Shamed the rank meteor which his sense allured. Wreck if he was, the ruin yet betray'd The shatter'd fane for gods departed made; And still, through weeds neglected and o'erthrown, The blurr'd inscription show'd the altar-stone. So scorn'd he not, as folly or as pride, The lofty code which made the Indian's guide; But from that hour a subtle change came o'er The thoughts he veil'd, the outward mien he wore; A mournful, weary gloom, a pall'd distaste Of all the joys so warmly once embraced. His eye no more _looks onward_. but its gaze Rests where Remorse a life misspent surveys: What costly treasures strew that waste behind; What whirlwinds daunt the soul that sows the wind! By the dark shape of what he _is_, serene Stands the bright ghost of what he might have been: Here the vast loss, and there the worthless gain-- Vice scorn'd, yet woo'd, and Virtue loved in vain. 'Tis said, the Nightingale, who hears the thrill Of some rich lute, made vocal by sweet skill, To match the music strains its wild essay, Feels its inferior art, and envying, pines away: So, waked at last, and scarcely now confest, Pined the still Poet in the Worldling's breast! So with the Harmony of Good, compared Its lesser self--so languish'd and despair'd.