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."
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 boundIn 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.