to your eyes,
And light shines everywhere, you can be wise;
But, when its storms in common course arise,
To you the wind but sobs and grieves
Wailing with the streaming leaves.

"Rust eats the steel, and moths corrupt the cloth,
And peevish doubts destroy the soul that's loth
To strive for duty, merged in shameful sloth,
And lolls a weary wretch forlorn,
While men reap the mellow corn.

"It is not man's to dream in sweet repose;
He toils and murmurs, as he wondering goes,
Poor changeful glitter on the stream that flows
In lapses huge and solemn roar,
Ever on without a shore.

"The plantlet grown in darkness puts forth spray;
Through loaded gloom yearns feebly toward some ray
Of bounty golden from the outer day
That shines eternally sublime
On the dancing motes of time."

The music stopped, and passed into a smile
Of tenderness, which she impressed to guile
Her pain from me: I gazed as one awhile
Escaped, who sees twin rainbows shine
O'er his wrecked ship gulfed in brine.

My lost soul sank adown in soundless seas
To ruined heaps besprent with ancient lees
Of wealth: by soft stupendous ocean-trees;
By anchors forged in early time,
Changed to trails of rusted slime:

To where, what seemed a tomb, in this deep hell
Of night, bore a dim name I dread to tell:
And there I heard sound some gigantic bell,
Whose thunder laughing through my brain
Mocked me back to flesh again.

Here all was emptier than the empty shade
Of mist before a midnight moon decayed:
Here life was strange as death, and more dismayed
My spirit, now scarce conscious she
Urged entreaty yet to me.

"'Tis life in life to know the King is just,
And will not animate his helpless dust
With fire unquenchable whose ardour must
Achieve majestic deeds that raise
Universal shouts of praise:

"Shouts of acclaim that gather into story,
Chanted by one on some high promontory
Who glowing in the dawn's advancing glory,
Far down upon the listening crowd
Shines through swathes of lingering cloud:

"And fires, by what he sings, to noble feud
With grosser instincts, the charged multitude,
That grow in temper and similitude
To those great souls whose victories
Triumph still in melodies:

"This fire will not be granted to distress,
To fail in cold dead ash and bitterness:
He will not grant true love that yearns to bless
The world, that it may only sigh
Back into itself and di