Lucile | Page 9

regret. That target, discuss'd by the travellers of old, Which to one
appear'd argent, to one appear'd gold, To him, ever lingering on Doubt's
dizzy margent, Appear'd in one moment both golden and argent. The
man who seeks one thing in life, and but one, May hope to achieve it
before life be done; But he who seeks all things, wherever he goes,
Only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows A harvest of
barren regrets. And the worm That crawls on in the dust to the definite
term Of its creeping existence, and sees nothing more Than the path it
pursues till its creeping be o'er, In its limited vision, is happier far Than
the Half-Sage, whose course, fix'd by no friendly star Is by each star
distracted in turn, and who knows Each will still be as distant wherever
he goes.
V.
Both brilliant and brittle, both bold and unstable, Indecisive yet keen,
Alfred Vargrave seem'd able To dazzle, but not to illumine mankind. A
vigorous, various, versatile mind; A character wavering, fitful,
uncertain, As the shadow that shakes o'er a luminous curtain, Vague,
flitting, but on it forever impressing The shape of some substance at
which you stand guessing: When you said, "All is worthless and weak
here," behold! Into sight on a sudden there seem'd to unfold Great
outlines of strenuous truth in the man: When you said, "This is genius,"
the outlines grew wan, And his life, though in all things so gifted and
skill'd, Was, at best, but a promise which nothing fulfill'd.
VI.
In the budding of youth, ere wild winds can deflower The shut leaves
of man's life, round the germ of his power Yet folded, his life had been
earnest. Alas! In that life one occasion, one moment, there was When
this earnestness might, with the life-sap of youth, Lusty fruitage have

borne in his manhood's full growth; But it found him too soon, when
his nature was still The delicate toy of too pliant a will, The boisterous
wind of the world to resist, Or the frost of the world's wintry wisdom.
He miss'd That occasion, too rathe in its advent. Since then, He had
made it a law, in his commerce with men, That intensity in him, which
only left sore The heart it disturb'd, to repel and ignore. And thus, as
some Prince by his subjects deposed, Whose strength he, by seeking to
crush it, disclosed, In resigning the power he lack'd power to support
Turns his back upon courts, with a sneer at the court, In his converse
this man for self-comfort appeal'd To a cynic denial of all he conceal'd
In the instincts and feelings belied by his words. Words, however, are
things: and the man who accords To his language the license to outrage
his soul, Is controll'd by the words he disdains to control. And,
therefore, he seem'd in the deeds of each day The light code proclaim'd
on his lips to obey; And, the slave of each whim, follow'd wilfully
aught That perchance fool'd the fancy, or flatter'd the thought. Yet,
indeed, deep within him, the spirits of truth, Vast, vague aspirations,
the powers of his youth, Lived and breathed, and made moan--stirr'd
themselves--strove to start Into deeds--though deposed, in that Hades,
his heart. Like those antique Theogonies ruin'd and hurl'd, Under clefts
of the hills, which, convulsing the world, Heaved, in earthquake, their
heads the rent caverns above, To trouble at times in the light court of
Jove All its frivolous gods, with an undefined awe, Of wrong'd rebel
powers that own'd not their law. For his sake, I am fain to believe that,
if born To some lowlier rank (from the world's languid scorn Secured
by the world's stern resistance) where strife, Strife and toil, and not
pleasure, gave purpose to life, He possibly might have contrived to
attain Not eminence only, but worth. So, again, Had he been of his own
house the first-born, each gift Of a mind many-gifted had gone to uplift
A great name by a name's greatest uses. But there He stood isolated,
opposed, as it were, To life's great realities; part of no plan; And if ever
a nobler and happier man He might hope to become, that alone could
be when With all that is real in life and in men What was real in him
should have been reconciled; When each influence now from
experience exiled Should have seized on his being, combined with his
nature, And form'd as by fusion, a new human creature: As when those
airy elements viewless to sight (The amalgam of which, if our science

be right, The germ of this populous planet doth fold) Unite in the glass
of the chemist, behold! Where a void seem'd before,