n the Realm of Death?--beware
To pluck the fruits that glitter to thine eye;
Content thyself with gazing on their glow--
Short are the joys Possession can bestow,
And in Possession sweet Desire will die.
'Twas not the ninefold chain of waves that bound
Thy daughter, Ceres, to the Stygian river--
She pluck'd the fruit of the unholy ground,
And so--was Hell's for ever!

3

The weavers of the web--the Fates--but sway
The matter and the things of clay;
Safe from each change that Time to matter gives,
Nature's blest playmate, free at will to stray
With Gods a god, amidst the fields of Day,
The FORM, the ARCHETYPE,[8] serenely lives.
Would'st thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing?
Cast from thee, Earth, the bitter and the real,
High from this cramp'd and dungeon being, spring
Into the Realm of the Ideal!

[Footnote 8: "Die Gestalt"--Form, the Platonic Archetype.]

4

Here, bathed, Perfection, in thy purest ray,
Free from the clogs and taints of clay,
Hovers divine the Archetypal Man!
Like those dim phantom ghosts of life that gleam
And wander voiceless by the Stygian stream,
While yet they stand in fields Elysian,
Ere to the flesh the Immortal ones descend--
If doubtful ever in the Actual life,
Each contest--here a victory crowns the end
Of every nobler strife.

5

Not from the strife itself to set thee free,
But more to nerve--doth Victory
Wave her rich garland from the Ideal clime.
Whate'er thy wish, the Earth has no repose--
Life still must drag thee onward as it flows,
Whirling thee down the dancing surge of Time.
But when the courage sinks beneath the dull
Sense of its narrow limits--on the soul,
Bright from the hill-tops of the Beautiful,
Bursts the attained goal!

6

If worth thy while the glory and the strife
Which fire the lists of Actual Life--
The ardent rush to fortune or to fame,
In the hot field where Strength and Valour are,
And rolls the whirling, thunder of the car,
And the world, breathless, eyes the glorious game--
Then dare and strive--the prize can but belong
To him whose valour o'er his tribe prevails;
In life the victory only crowns the strong--
He who is feeble fails.

7

But as some stream, when from its source it gushes,
O'er rocks in storm and tumult rushes,
And smooths its after course to bright repose,
So, th