CXXIV. We wither from our youth, we gasp away-- Sick--sick; unfound the boon--unslaked the thirst, Though to the last, in verge of our decay, Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first-- But all too late,--so are we doubly curst. Love, Fame, Ambition, Avarice--'tis the same, Each idle--and all ill--and none the worst-- For all are meteors with a different name,[oo] And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame. CXXV. Few--none--find what they love or could have loved, Though accident, blind contact, and the strong Necessity of loving, have removed Antipathies--but to recur, ere long, Envenomed with irrevocable wrong; And Circumstance, that unspiritual God And Miscreator, makes and helps along Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,[502] Whose touch turns Hope to dust,--the dust we all have trod. CXXVI. Our life is a false nature--'tis not in The harmony of things,--this hard decree, This uneradicable taint of Sin, This boundless Upas, this all-blasting tree, Whose root is Earth--whose leaves and branches be The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew-- Disease, death, bondage--all the woes we see, And worse, the woes we see not--which throb through The immedicable soul,[503] with heart-aches ever new. CXXVII. Yet let us ponder boldly--'tis a base Abandonment of reason[504] to resign Our right of thought--our last and only place Of refuge; this, at least, shall still be mine: Though from our birth the Faculty divine Is chained and tortured--cabined, cribbed, confined, And bred in darkness,[505] lest the Truth should shine Too brightly on the unpreparéd mind, The beam pours in--for Time and Skill will couch the blind. CXXVIII. Arches on arches![506] as it were that Rome, Collecting the chief trophies of her line, Would build up all her triumphs in one dome, Her Coliseum stands;[507] the moonbeams shine As 'twere its natural torches--for divine Should be the light which streams here,--to illume This long-explored but still exhaustless mine Of Contemplation; and the azure gloom Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume CXXIX. Hues which have words, and speak to ye of Heaven, Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument, And shadows forth its glory. There is given Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent, A Spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power And magic in the ruined battlement, For which the Palace of the present hour Must yield its pomp, and wait till Ages are its dower.