CUERVO - Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia

26 PAULINE
Which I cannot account for, nor explain,
But which I stille not, being bound to trust
All feelings equally-to hear all sides:
Yet I cannot indulge them, and they live,
Referring to some state or life unknown .•
My selfishness is satiated not,
It wears me like a flame; my hunger for
All pleasure, howso'er minute, is pain;
I envy-how I envy him whose mind
Turns with its energies to some one end I
To elevate a sect, or a pursuit,
. ,
However mean-so my still baffled hopes
Seek out abstractions; I would have but one
Delight on earth, so it were wholly mine;
One rapture all my soul could fill-and this
Wild feeling places me in dream afar,
In some wide country, where the eye can see
No end to the far hills and dales bestrewn
With shining towers and dwellings. I grow mad
Well-nigh, to know not one abode but holds
Some pleasure-for my soul could grasp them all,
But must remain with this vile form. I look
·With hope to age at last, which quenching much,
May let me concentrate the sparks it spares.
This restlessness of passion meets in me
A craving after knowledge: the sole proof
Of a commanding will is in that power
Repressed; for I beheld it in its dawn,
That sleepless harpy, with its budding wings,
And I considered whether I should yield
All hopes and fears, to live alone with it,
Finding a recompence in its wild eyes;
And when I found that I should perish so,
I bade its wild eyes close from me for ever ;­
And I am left alone with my delights,-
So it lies in me a chained thing-still ready
To serve me, 11 I loose its slightest bond-
I cannot but be proud of my bright slave.
And thus I know this earth is not my sphere,
For I cannot so narrow me, but that
I still exceed it; in their elements
My love would pass my reason-but since here
Love must receive its object from this earth,
·While reason will be chainless, the few truths
Caught from its wanderings have sufficed to quell
All love below ;-then what must be that love
©Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia