35 Sonnets | Page 5

I in all I touch--?Soul by that part I hold in common with all,?And I the spoiled part, that doth make sense such?As I can err by it and my sense mine call.?The rest is wondering what these thoughts may mean,?That come to explain and suddenly are gone,?Like messengers that mock the message' mien,?Explaining all but the explanation;?As if we a ciphered letter's cipher hit?And find it in an unknown language writ.
XXXIII.
He that goes back does, since he goes, advance,?Though he doth not advance who goeth back,?And he that seeks, though he on nothing chance,?May still by words be said to find a lack.?This paradox of having, that is nought?In the world's meaning of the things it screens,?Is yet true of the substance of pure thought?And there means something by the nought it means.?For thinking nought does on nought being confer,?As giving not is acting not to give,?And, to the same unbribed true thought, to err?Is to find truth, though by its negative.?So why call this world false, if false to be?Be to be aught, and being aught Being to be?
XXXIV.
Happy the maimed, the halt, the mad, the blind--?All who, stamped separate by curtailing birth,?Owe no duty's allegiance to mankind?Nor stand a valuing in their scheme of worth!?But I, whom Fate, not Nature, did curtail,?By no exterior voidness being exempt,?Must bear accusing glances where I fail,?Fixed in the general orbit of contempt.?Fate, less than Nature in being kind to lacking,?Giving the ill, shows not as outer cause,?Making our mock-free will the mirror's backing?Which Fate's own acts as if in itself shows;?And men, like children, seeing the image there,?Take place for cause and make our will Fate bear.
XXXV.
Good. I have done. My heart weighs. I am sad.?The outer day, void statue of lit blue,?Is altogether outward, other, glad?At mere being not-I (so my aches construe).?I, that have failed in everything, bewail?Nothing this hour but that I have bewailed,?For in the general fate what is't to fail??Why, fate being past for Fate, 'tis but to have failed.?Whatever hap-or stop, what matters it,?Sith to the mattering our will bringeth nought??With the higher trifling let us world our wit,?Conscious that, if we do't, that was the lot?The regular stars bound us to, when they stood?Godfathers to our birth and to our blood.
***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 35 SONNETS***
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