s gate,
And shot out on the desert, where the wind
Made race with us, but lagged behind at last.
III.
TWO PROBLEMS.
Vienna gained, I gave myself to books.
Here I had promised Veera I should be.
New paths were opened to me, and my days
Were lost in study. All my tutor knew
Seemed cramped and meagre in these wider ways
Of thought and science. Better far, I said,
To know, than be a king. There is no crown
That so becomes the brow as knowledge does.
To solve two problems, now engrossed my life.
My Bedouin tutor had spent all his days
Upon them, but without success. On me
He grafted all the purpose of his soul,
Determined, though he failed, that I might yet
Toil on when he was compassed round by death.
These sister problems were, _How make pure gold?_
And, _How endure forever on the earth?_
IV.
THE DOOR.
Among the books that I had bought myself,
I found the Bible. This to peruse
I soon essayed; but ere I had read far,
Behold! I found the door behind which lay
The answers to my problems. Locked and barred
The door was, yet I knew it was the door.
For here I read of Eden, and that in the midst
The Tree of Life stood, while through the land
A river ran which parted in four heads;
And one was Gihon, the Ethiop stream;
And one was Pison, the great crystal tide
Which floods Havilah, where fine gold is found,
And rare bdellium and the onyx stone.
So, as my tutor said, my problems were
A dual secret, and the one contained
The other. All the long night through I pored
Above the words, and kissed the unconscious page
With reverent lips. My heart was like a sponge
Soaked in the water of the mystic words.
V.
THE KEY.
As one who in the night, passing a street
Deserted, finds a lost key rusted and old,
Yet knows that it will fit some great iron door
Behind which countless treasures are concealed,
So I, when first I came to Mesmer's works,
Knew I had found the key to move the door
Of my twin problems. Then, day after day,
I made them all my study. Much I mourned
The sad disheartened life that Mesmer led.
He never knew that one good thing, success;
But yet his strong, persistent genius, to the end
Endured. Yet such the rule in every age.
The one true man appears, and gives his thought,
At which the whole world rail or basely sneer.
The next man comes and makes a thankless use
Of what the other knew, and wins the praise
The first man lost by bein
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