Poems (Hardy)/Tragedy
TRAGEDY
"The tragedy is not his (Rousseau's); but the
tragedy is the world's, that it should have had to
endure him as the master of its thought, its leader."
tragedy is the world's, that it should have had to
endure him as the master of its thought, its leader."
NOT that, O World, thy grave diurnal round
Beheld the heart of man unreconciled
To such a lot as thou hadst given thy child;
Not that man's thought was red with blood, or bound
In prison by his brother's hate, or wound
Within the web of destiny or wild,
Dark death's; nay, not because of these up-piled,
Do fear and pity all my soul astound:
But that, O World, processionary moved
Thy nations,—this unto its doom, and this
To starlike state, marshaled thereto by fate,
Wrapped up in one fire-shafted word, amiss
From mouth ignoble, while thy prophets proved
Un-Delphian, dumb, not daring to be great.
Beheld the heart of man unreconciled
To such a lot as thou hadst given thy child;
Not that man's thought was red with blood, or bound
In prison by his brother's hate, or wound
Within the web of destiny or wild,
Dark death's; nay, not because of these up-piled,
Do fear and pity all my soul astound:
But that, O World, processionary moved
Thy nations,—this unto its doom, and this
To starlike state, marshaled thereto by fate,
Wrapped up in one fire-shafted word, amiss
From mouth ignoble, while thy prophets proved
Un-Delphian, dumb, not daring to be great.