with them; and the wide heaths where they play,
The hollies, and the cliff, and the sea-shore,
The sand, the sea-birds, and the distant sails, 105
These are to her dear as to them; the tales
With which this day the children she beguiled
She gleaned from Breton grandames, when a child,
In every hut along this sea-coast wild.
She herself loves them still, and, when they are told, 110
Can forget all to hear them, as of old.

Dear saints, it is not sorrow, as I hear,
Not suffering, which shuts up eye and ear
To all that has delighted them before,
And lets us be what we were once no more. 115
No, we may suffer deeply, yet retain
Power to be moved and soothed, for all our pain,
By what of old pleased us, and will again.
No, 'tis the gradual furnace of the world,
In whose hot air our spirits are upcurl'd 120
Until they crumble, or else grow like steel--
Which kills in us the bloom, the youth, the spring--
Which leaves the fierce necessity to feel,
But takes away the power--this can avail,
By drying up our joy in everything, 125
To make our former pleasures all seem stale.
This, or some tyrannous single thought, some fit
Of passion, which subdues our souls to it,
Till for its sake alone we live and move--
Call it ambition, or remorse, or love-- 130
This too can change us wholly, and make seem
All which we did before, shadow and dream.

And yet, I swear, it angers me to see
How this fool passion gulls deg. men potently; deg.134
Being, in truth, but a diseased unrest, 135
And an unnatural overheat at best.
How they are full of languor and distress
Not having it; which when they do possess,
They straightway are burnt up with fume and care,
And spend their lives in posting here and there deg. deg.140
Where this plague drives them; and have little ease,
Are furious with themselves, and hard to please.
Like that bold Caesar, deg. the famed Roman wight, deg.143
Who wept at reading of a Grecian knight
Who made a name at younger years than he; 145
Or that renown'd mirror of chivalry,
Prince Alexander, deg. Philip's peerless son, deg.147
Who carried the great war from Macedon
Into the Soudan's deg. realm, and thundered on