Seeing her thus, why should I love her?
O it is that fatal sweetness,
Round about her and above her—
'Tis her beauty's full completeness
That for evermore deceives me,
Seeming like a soul outshining;
And this falsehood never leaves me,
But my fond soul still keeps pining.
O God! I am all unworthy,
Heart and mind are spent and wasted;
And this struggle with the earthy
Souls of men, my life hath blasted.
But I'll nerve me up to bear it—
Be a man with men contending;
Hug the mortal while I wear it,
And hope for a speedy ending.
In Rome are many ruins, and men come
To weep in pious sorrow o'er an arch
Fallen in fragments—to bewail the doom
Of broken marble, and to chide the march
Of pitiless time, who yearly covers o'er
With dust and ivy some affecting show
Of the decay of greatness—to deplore
A costly edifice's overthrow.
And some, a few, do rouse up the dead past,
And talk sublimely to the ancient ghosts
Of Cicero and Cæsar, with a vast
Amount of fancy which deserves their boasts.
The past is a great study—it is well!
Man should look backward to know where he is:
Then let the pilgrim court the awful spell—
A pensive, salutary joy is his.
