Disenchantment! Dis-illusion!

Must each noble aspiration

Come at last to this conclusion,

Jarring discord, wild confusion,
Lassitude, renunciation ?

Not with steeper fall nor faster,

From the sun's serene dominions,

Not through brighter realms nor vaster, In swift ruin and disaster

Icarus fell with shattered pinions!

Sweet Pandora! dear Pandora!

Why did mighty Jove create thee

Coy as Thetis, fair as Flora,
Beautiful as young Aurora,

If to win thee is to hate thee?

No, not hate thee! for this feeling

Of unrest and long resistance

Is but passionate appealing,

A prophetic whisper stealing

O'er the chords of our existence.

Him whom thou dost once enamour,
Thou, beloved, never leavest;

In life's discord, strife, and clamor,
Still he feels thy spell of glamour;
Him of Hope thou ne'er bereavest.

Weary hearts by thee are lifted,

Struggling souls by thee are strengthened,

Clouds of fear asunder rifted,

Truth from falsehood cleansed and sifted,

Lives, like days in summer, lengthened.

Therefore art thou ever dearer,

O my Sibyl, my deceiver !

For thou makest each mystery clearer,
And the unattained seems nearer

When thou fillest my heart with fever!

Muse of all the Gifts and Graces!

Though the fields around us wither, There are ampler realms and spaces, Where no foot has left its traces;

Let us turn and wander thither.

NOTES.