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We pause; we hush our heart,
And thus address the Gods:
“The world hath fail’d to impart
The joy our youth forebodes,
Fail’d to fill up the void which in our breasts we bear.

“Changeful till now, we still
Look’d on to something new;
Let us, with changeless will,
Henceforth look on to you,
To find with you the joy we in vain here require!”

Fools! That so often here
Happiness mock’d our prayer,
I think, might make us fear
A like event elsewhere;
Make us, not fly to dreams, but moderate desire.

And yet, for those who know
Themselves, who wisely take
Their way through life, and bow
To what they cannot break,
Why should I say that life need yield but moderate bliss?

Shall we, with temper spoil’d,
Health sapp’d by living ill,
And judgment all embroil’d
By sadness and self-will,
Shall we judge what for man is not true bliss or is?

Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy’d the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done;
To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes–

That we must feign a bliss
Of doubtful future date,
And, while we dream on this,
Lose all our present state,
And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose?

Not much, I know, you prize
What pleasures may be had,
Who look on life with eyes
Estranged, like mine, and sad;
And yet the village-churl feels the truth more than you,

Who’s loath to leave this life
Which to him little yields–
His hard-task’d sunburnt wife,
His often-labour’d fields,
The boors with whom he talk’d, the country-spots he knew.

But thou, because thou hear’st
Men scoff at Heaven and Fate,
Because the Gods thou fear’st
Fail to make blest thy state,
Tremblest, and wilt not dare to trust the joys there are!

I say: Fear not! Life still
Leaves human effort scope.
But, since life teems with ill,
Nurse no extravagant hope:
Because thou must not dream, thou need’st not then despair!

A long pause. At the end of it the notes of a harp
below are again heard, and CALLICLES sings:–

Far, far from here,
The Adriatic breaks in a warm bay
Among the green Illyrian hills; and there
The sunshine in the happy glens is fair,
And by the sea, and in the brakes.
The grass is cool, the sea-side air
Buoyant and fresh, the mountain flowers
More virginal and sweet than ours.
And there, they say, two bright and aged snakes,
Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia,
Bask in the glens or on the warm sea-shore,
In breathless quiet, after all their ills;
Nor do they see their country, nor the place
Where the Sphinx lived among the frowning hills,
Nor the unhappy palace of their race,
Nor Thebes, nor the Ismenus, any more.

There those two live, far in the Illyrian brakes!
They had stay’d long enough to see,
In Thebes, the billow of calamity
Over their own dear children roll’d,
Curse upon curse, pang upon pang,
For years, they sitting helpless in their home,
A grey old man and woman; yet of old
The Gods had to their marriage come,
And at the banquet all the Muses sang.

Therefore they did not end their days
In sight of blood; but were rapt, far away,
To where the west-wind plays,
And murmurs of the Adriatic come
To those untrodden mountain-lawns; and there
Placed safely in changed forms, the pair
Wholly forget their first sad life, and home,
And all that Theban woe, and stray
For ever through the glens, placid and dumb.