XIX.

   I can repeople with the past—­and of
   The present there is still for eye and thought,
   And meditation chastened down, enough;
   And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought;
   And of the happiest moments which were wrought
   Within the web of my existence, some
   From thee, fair Venice! have their colours caught: 
   There are some feelings Time cannot benumb,
Nor torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb.

XX.

   But from their nature will the tannen grow
   Loftiest on loftiest and least sheltered rocks,
   Rooted in barrenness, where nought below
   Of soil supports them ’gainst the Alpine shocks
   Of eddying storms; yet springs the trunk, and mocks
   The howling tempest, till its height and frame
   Are worthy of the mountains from whose blocks
   Of bleak, grey granite, into life it came,
And grew a giant tree;—­the mind may grow the same.

XXI.

   Existence may be borne, and the deep root
   Of life and sufferance make its firm abode
   In bare and desolate bosoms:  mute
   The camel labours with the heaviest load,
   And the wolf dies in silence.  Not bestowed
   In vain should such examples be; if they,
   Things of ignoble or of savage mood,
   Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay
May temper it to bear,—­it is but for a day.

XXII.

   All suffering doth destroy, or is destroyed,
   Even by the sufferer; and, in each event,
   Ends:  —­Some, with hope replenished and rebuoyed,
   Return to whence they came—­with like intent,
   And weave their web again; some, bowed and bent,
   Wax grey and ghastly, withering ere their time,
   And perish with the reed on which they leant;
   Some seek devotion, toil, war, good or crime,
According as their souls were formed to sink or climb.

XXIII.

   But ever and anon of griefs subdued
   There comes a token like a scorpion’s sting,
   Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued;
   And slight withal may be the things which bring
   Back on the heart the weight which it would fling
   Aside for ever:  it may be a sound —
   A tone of music—­summer’s eve—­or spring —
   A flower—­the wind—­the ocean—­which shall wound,
Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound.

XXIV.

   And how and why we know not, nor can trace
   Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind,
   But feel the shock renewed, nor can efface
   The blight and blackening which it leaves behind,
   Which out of things familiar, undesigned,
   When least we deem of such, calls up to view
   The spectres whom no exorcism can bind, —
   The cold—­the changed—­perchance the dead—­anew,
The mourned, the loved, the lost—­too many!—­yet how few!