our laborious hiving
    What men call treasure, and the gods call dross,
      Life seems a jest of Fate’s contriving, 80
      Only secure in every one’s conniving,
    A long account of nothings paid with loss,
    Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires,
      After our little hour of strut and rave,
    With all our pasteboard passions and desires, 85
    Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires,
      Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. 
        Ah, there is something here
      Unfathomed by the cynic’s sneer,
      Something that gives our feeble light 90
      A high immunity from Night,
      Something that leaps life’s narrow bars
    To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven;
      A seed of sunshine that doth leaven
    Our earthly dulness with the beams of stars, 95
        And glorify our clay
    With light from fountains elder than the Day;
      A conscience more divine than we,
      A gladness fed with secret tears,
      A vexing, forward-reaching sense 100
      Of some more noble permanence;
        A light across the sea,
      Which haunts the soul and will not let it be,
    Still glimmering from the heights of undegenerate years.

V

        Whither leads the path 105
        To ampler fates that leads? 
        Not down through flowery meads,
        To reap an aftermath
        Of youth’s vainglorious weeds,
        But up the steep, amid the wrath 110
      And shock of deadly hostile creeds,
      Where the world’s best hope and stay
    By battle’s flashes gropes a desperate way,
    And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds. 
        Peace hath her not ignoble wreath, 115
        Ere yet the sharp, decisive word
    Lights the black lips of cannon, and the sword
        Dreams in its easeful sheath: 
    But some day the live coal behind the thought. 
        Whether from Baael’s stone obscene, 120
        Or from the shrine serene
        Of God’s pure altar brought,
    Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and pen
    Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught,
    And, helpless in the fiery passion caught, 125
    Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men: 
    Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed
    Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued,
    And cries reproachful:  “Was it, then, my praise,
    And not myself was loved?  Prove now thy truth; 130
    I claim of thee the promise of thy youth;
    Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase,