CUERVO - Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia

84 PARACELSUS
It troubles me but little that your aims,
Vast in their dawning, and most likely grown
Extravagantly since, have bamed you.
Perchance I am glad; you merit greater praise;
Because they are too glorious to be gained,
You do not blindly cling to them and die;
You fell, but have not sullenly refused
To rise, because an angel worsted you
In wrestling, though the world holds not your peer
And though too harsh and sudden is the change
To yield content as yet-still, you pursue
The ungracious path as though 'twere rosy-strewn.
'Tis well: and your reward, or soon or late,
Will come from Him whom no man serves in vain.
Paracelsus. Ah, very fine I For my part, I conceive
The very pausing from all further toil,
Which you find heinous, would be as a seal
To the sincerity of all my deeds.
To be consistent I should die at once;
I calculated on no after-life;
Yet (how crept in, how fostered, I know not)
Here am I with as passionate regret
For youth, and health, and love so vainly lost,
As if their preservation had been first
And foremost in my thoughts; and this strange fact
Humbled me wondrously, and had due force
In rendering me the more disposed to follow
A certain counsel, a mysterious warning-
You will not understand-but 'twas a man
'With aims not mine, but yet pursued like mine,
'Vith the same fervor and no more success.
"Vho perished in my sight; but summoned me
As I would shun the ghastly fate I saw,
To serve my race at once; to wait no longer
'Till God should interfere in my behalf,
And let the next world's knowledge dawn on this;
But to distrust myself, put pride away,
And give my gains, imperfect as they were,
To men. I have not leisure to explain
How since, a strange succession of events
Has raised me to the station you behold,
Wherein I seem to turn to most account
The mere wreck of the past,-perhaps receive
Some feeble glimmering token that God views
And may approve my penance: therefore here
You find me-doing most good or least harm:
And if folks wonder much and profit little
'Tis not my fault; only, I shall rejoice
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