And more than these, Love, Beauty, Reason, Joy.

All these are life, but self’s a half-formed toy.

{62}

{62}

LXII.

O ye faint touches, that but tire the gaze,

Casting reflection on incompetence;

O all ye thoughts, that weave truth’s tangled maze,

Would we might grasp your spirit’s hidden sense:

Man is shut out from what himself assists;

Too dear-bought self, rich privilege to conceal,

Strange substance, individualized, that twists

A web, it knows not how, more stiff than steel:

Man knows not how, or wherefore, whence, or why;

He thinks that he must go; whither? he doubts,

Creeds he must form and hopes; he cannot fly,

And haply would not, fostering fears he scouts;

Thrown on the world, he’d lose, in the world’s din,

Too fine perception of sad worlds within.

{63}

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