know 60 but I thoughts Grow, with a certain humming in my ears, Ye mark me not! What do they whisper | About the life before I lived this life, And this life too, popes, cardinals, and With grapes, and add a visor and a Term, And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down, To comfort me on my entablature, Whereon I am to lie till I must ask "Do I live, am I dead?" ye have stabbed me with ingratitude For 80 And then how I shall lie through centuries, And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste Good strong thick stupefying incense smoke! For as I lie here, hours of the dead night, 85 Dying in state and by such slow degrees, 110 There, leave me, there! God, ye wish it! Clammy squares - ye wish it Stone Gritstone, a-crumble! which sweat 115 As if the corpse they keep were oozing through And no more lapis to delight the world! Well, go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there, When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for glorious reward? Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons goes right to the aim, Didst thou see the thin hands of thy And some mountain, the last to with By the spirit, when age shall o'ercome thee, thou still shalt enjoy More indeed, than at first, when inconscious, the life of a boy. Crush that life, and behold its wine running! Each deed thou hast done Dies, revives, goes to work in the world! until e'en as the sun Looking down on the earth, though clouds spoil him, though tempests efface, 165 Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must everywhere trace The results of his past summer-prime, so, each ray of thy will, Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, shall thrill Thy whole people, the countless, with ardor; till they too give forth |