Page:The Last Words of Cleanthes - Longmans Magazine vol 2, pages 500-505.pdf/5

Rh Now slowly rising from her daily grave, Profusely furnish funeral honours due To those whose life-lamps burnt in caves, like mine. Young man! forbear thy touch!—thy tearful voice— Begone at once! behold the waves flow near, And soon will kiss these pale and paralyzed feet. The crescent points creep round with gushing gleams, And now they eddying meet, and deepening flow!

'Covering his face, with smother'd sobs he goes— Farewell!—nay, boy!—he weeps, but he is gone. Ever-young World! I have well loved thy youth, And thought for me thou hadst no heart at all; But 'twas not so. I ne'er had sought to gain That sympathy which yet, like unpluck'd fruit, Is ready for the worthy traveller's hand. Absorb'd in work for man, men I forgot, With all their cherished trivialities; Wherefore they view'd me as a thing apart.

'O Zeus! I bless thee for the life thou gavest, So full of bodily strength, and health, and years; I bless thee for the mind that hath no fears Of death, whereby our atoms thou still savest, Till some fine consciousness again appears.

'O Zeus! I have doubted further gifts of Gods— Doubted futurity for each special mind; The soul, like music, dying on the wind; The body merging in earth's sands and sods;— But to thy Ruling evermore resigned.

'O Zeus! no claim have we to aught beyond! We bless thee for the life we have enjoyed; We hope our spirit shall not be destroyed: Thy waters to my dying Hymn respond In harmonies that change, ere rapture-cloyed.