Experience

which coils round and strangles quick Each hope with 'Ask the Past if hoping skills

""To work accomplishment, or proves a trick

Wiling thee to endeavor! Strive, fool, stop

Nowise, so live, so die-that's law! why kick

"Against the pricks?' All out-wormed! Slumber, drop

Thy films once more and veil the bliss within!

Experience strangle hope? Hope waves a-top

"Her wings triumphant! Come what will, I win,

Whoever loses! Every dream's assured Of soberest fulfilment. Where's a sin

"Except in doubting that the light, which lured

The unwary into darkness, meant no wrong

Had I but marched on bold, nor paused immured

"By mists I should have pressed through, passed along

My way henceforth rejoicing? Not the boy's Passionate impulse he conceits SO strong,

"Which, at first touch, truth, bubblelike, destroys,

Not the man's slow conviction 'Vanity Of vanities-alike my griefs and joys!'

"Ice!-thawed (look up) each bird, each insect by

(Look round) by all the plants that break in bloom,

(Look down) by every dead friend's memory

"That smiles 'Am I the dust within my tomb?'

Not either, but both these-amalgam

rare

Mix in a product, not from Nature's womb,

"But stuff which He the Operant-who shall dare

Describe His operation?-strikes alive And thaumaturgic. I nor know nor

care

"How from this tohu-bohu — hopes which dive,

And fears which soar-faith, ruined through and through

By doubt, and doubt, faith treads to dust-revive

"In some surprising sort,—as see, they do!

Not merely foes no longer but fast friends.

What does it mean unless-O strange and new

"Discovery!-this life proves a winepress-blends