A time to sicken and to swoon,

When science reaches forth her arms

To feel from world to world, and charms Her secret from the latest moon?'

Behold, ye speak an idle thing:

Ye never knew the sacred dust: I do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing:

And unto one her note is gay,

For now her little ones have ranged;

And unto one her note is changed, Because her brood is stol'n away.

XXII.

THE path by which we twain did go,
Which led by tracts that pleased us well,

Thro' four sweet years arose and fell,
From flower to flower, from snow to snow:

And we with singing cheer'd the way,
And crown'd with all the season lent,
From April on to April went,

And glad at heart from May to May:

But where the path we walk'd began
To slant the fifth autumnal slope,
As we descended following Hope,
There sat the Shadow fear'd of man;

Who broke our fair companionship,

And spread his mantle dark and cold; And wrapt thee formless in the fold, And dull'd the murmur on thy lip;

And bore thee where I could not see

Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste;

And think, that somewhere in the waste The Shadow sits and waits for me.

XXIII.

Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut,
Or breaking into song by fits;

Alone, alone, to where he sits,
The Shadow cloak'd from head to foot,

Who keeps the keys of all the creeds,
I wander, often falling lame,

And looking back to whence I came,
Or on to where the pathway leads;

And crying, how changed from where it ran
Thro' lands where not a leaf was dumb;

But all the lavish hills would hum

The murmur of a happy Pan:

When each by turns was guide to each,

And Fancy light from Fancy caught,

And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought;

Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech:

And all we met was fair and good,

And all was good that Time could bring,

And all the secret of the Spring Moved in the chambers of the blood:

And many an old philosophy

On Argive heights divinely sang,

And round us all the thicket rang To many a flute of Arcady.