Part 70 (1/2)

And lie thou there, My laurel bough!

Scornful Apollo's ensign, lie thou there!

Though thou hast been my shade in the world's heat-- Though I have loved thee, lived in honouring thee-- Yet lie thou there, My laurel bough!

I am weary of thee.

I am weary of the solitude Where he who bears thee must abide-- Of the rocks of Parna.s.sus, Of the rocks of Delphi, Of the moonlit peaks, and the caves.

Thou guardest them, Apollo!

Over the grave of the slain Pytho, Though young, intolerably severe!

Thou keepest aloof the profane, But the solitude oppresses thy votary!

The jars of men reach him not in thy valley-- But can life reach him?

Thou fencest him from the mult.i.tude-- Who will fence him from himself?

He hears nothing but the cry of the torrents, And the beating of his own heart.

The air is thin, the veins swell, The temples tighten and throb there-- Air! air!

Take thy bough, set me free from my solitude; I have been enough alone!

Where shall thy votary fly then? back to men?-- But they will gladly welcome him once more, And help him to unbend his too tense thought, And rid him of the presence of himself, And keep their friendly chatter at his ear, And haunt him, till the absence from himself, That other torment, grow unbearable; And he will fly to solitude again, And he will find its air too keen for him, And so change back; and many thousand times Be miserably bandied to and fro Like a sea-wave, betwixt the world and thee, Thou young, implacable G.o.d! and only death Can cut his oscillations short, and so Bring him to poise. There is no other way.

And yet what days were those, Parmenides!

When we were young, when we could number friends In all the Italian cities like ourselves, When with elated hearts we join'd your train.

Ye Sun-born Virgins! on the road of truth.[32]

Then we could still enjoy, then neither thought Nor outward things were closed and dead to us; But we received the shock of mighty thoughts On simple minds with a pure natural joy; And if the sacred load oppress'd our brain, We had the power to feel the pressure eased, The brow unbound, the thoughts flow free again, In the delightful commerce of the world.

We had not lost our balance then, nor grown Thought's slaves, and dead to every natural joy.

The smallest thing could give us pleasure then-- The sports of the country-people, A flute-note from the woods, Sunset over the sea; Seed-time and harvest, The reapers in the corn, The vinedresser in his vineyard, The village-girl at her wheel.

Fulness of life and power of feeling, ye Are for the happy, for the souls at ease, Who dwell on a firm basis of content!

But he, who has outlived his prosperous days-- But he, whose youth fell on a different world From that on which his exiled age is thrown-- Whose mind was fed on other food, was train'd By other rules than are in vogue to-day-- Whose habit of thought is fix'd, who will not change, But, in a world he loves not, must subsist In ceaseless opposition, be the guard Of his own breast, fetter'd to what he guards, That the world win no mastery over him-- Who has no friend, no fellow left, not one; Who has no minute's breathing s.p.a.ce allow'd To nurse his dwindling faculty of joy---- Joy and the outward world must die to him, As they are dead to me.

_A long pause, during which_ EMPEDOCLES _remains motionless, plunged in thought. The night deepens.

He moves forward and gazes round him, and proceeds_:--

And you, ye stars, Who slowly begin to marshal, As of old, in the fields of heaven, Your distant, melancholy lines!

Have you, too, survived yourselves?

Are you, too, what I fear to become?

You, too, once lived; You too moved joyfully Among august companions, In an older world, peopled by G.o.ds, In a mightier order, The radiant, rejoicing, intelligent Sons of Heaven.

But now, ye kindle Your lonely, cold-s.h.i.+ning lights, Unwilling lingerers In the heavenly wilderness, For a younger, ign.o.ble world; And renew, by necessity, Night after night your courses, In echoing, unnear'd silence, Above a race you know not-- Uncaring and undelighted, Without friend and without home; Weary like us, though not Weary with our weariness.

No, no, ye stars! there is no death with you, No languor, no decay! languor and death, They are with me, not you! ye are alive-- Ye, and the pure dark ether where ye ride Brilliant above me! And thou, fiery world, That sapp'st the vitals of this terrible mount Upon whose charr'd and quaking crust I stand-- Thou, too, brimmest with life!--the sea of cloud, That heaves its white and billowy vapours up To moat this isle of ashes from the world, Lives; and that other fainter sea, far down, O'er whose lit floor a road of moonbeams leads To Etna's Liparean sister-fires And the long dusky line of Italy-- That mild and luminous floor of waters lives, With held-in joy swelling its heart; I only, Whose spring of hope is dried, whose spirit has fail'd, I, who have not, like these, in solitude Maintain'd courage and force, and in myself Nursed an immortal vigour--I alone Am dead to life and joy, therefore I read In all things my own deadness.

_A long silence. He continues_:--

Oh, that I could glow like this mountain!

Oh, that my heart bounded with the swell of the sea!

Oh, that my soul were full of light as the stars!

Oh, that it brooded over the world like the air!

But no, this heart will glow no more; thou art A living man no more, Empedocles!

Nothing but a devouring flame of thought-- But a naked, eternally restless mind!