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And next, of what thou followest on to ask.
This being with me as I declare, 0 king,
My works, in all these varicolored kinds, 160
So done by me, accepted so by men–
Thou askest, if (my soul thus in men’s hearts)
I must not be accounted to attain
The very crown and proper end of life?
Inquiring thence how, now life closeth up,
I face death with success in my right hand:
Whether I fear death less than dost thyself
The fortunate of men? “For” (writest thou)
“Thou leavest much behind, while I leave naught.
Thy life stays in the poems men shall sing, 170
The pictures men shall study; while my life,
Complete and whole now in its power and joy,
Dies altogether with my brain and arm,
Is lost indeed; since, what survives myself?
The brazen statue to o’erlook my grave,
See on the promontory which I named.
And that–some supple courtier of my heir
Shall use its robed and sceptred arm, perhaps,
To fix the rope to, which best drags it down.
I go then: triumph thou, who dost not go!” 180

Nay, thou art worthy of hearing my whole mind.
Is this apparent, when thou turn’st to muse
Upon the scheme of earth and man in chief,
That admiration grows as knowledge grows?
That imperfection means perfection hid,
Reserved in part, to grace the after-time?
If, in the morning of philosophy,
Ere aught had been recorded, nay perceived,
Thou, with the light now in thee, couldst have looked
On all earth’s tenantry, from worm to bird, 190
Ere man, her last, appeared upon the stage–
Thou wouldst have seen them perfect, and deduced
The perfectness of others yet unseen.
Conceding which–had Zeus then questioned thee
“Shall I go on a step, improve on this,
Do more for visible creatures than is done?”
Thou wouldst have answered, “Ay, by making each
Grow conscious in himself–by that alone.
All’s perfect else: the shell sucks fast the rock,
The fish strikes through the sea, the snake both swims 200
And slides, forth range the beasts, the birds take flight,
Till life’s mechanics can no further go–
And all this joy in natural life is put
Like fire from off thy finger into each,
So exquisitely perfect is the same.
But ‘t is pure fire, and they mere matter are;
It has them, not they it: and so I choose
For man, thy last premeditated work
(If I might add a glory to the scheme)
That a third thing should stand apart from both, 210
A quality arise within his soul,
Which, intro-active, made to supervise
And feel the force it has, may view itself,
And so be happy.” Man might live at first
The animal life: but is there nothing more?
In due time, let him critically learn
How he lives; and, the more he gets to know
Of his own life’s adaptabilities,
The more joy-giving will his life become.
Thus man, who hath this quality, is best. 220