from Canto XIV

1

If from great Nature’s or our own abyss
     Of thought, we could but snatch a certainty,
Perhaps mankind might find the path they miss—
     But then ‘twould spoil much good philosophy.
One system eats another up, and this
     Much as old Saturn ate his progeny;
For when his pious consort gave him stones
In lieu of sons, of these he made no bones.

2

But System doth reverse the Titan’s breakfast,
     And eats her parents, albeit the digestion
Is difficult. Pray tell me, can you make fast,
     After due search, your faith to any question?
Look back o’er ages, ere unto the stake fast
     You bind yourself, and call some mode the best one.
Nothing more true than not to trust your senses;
And yet what are your other evidences?

3

For me, I know nought; nothing I deny,
    Admit, reject, contemn; and what know you,
Except perhaps that you were born to die?
     And both may after all turn out untrue.
An age may come, Font of Eternity,
     When nothing shall be either old or new.
Death, so call’d, is a thing which makes men weep,
And yet a third of life is pass’d in sleep.

4

A sleep without dreams, after a rough day
     Of toil, is what we covet most; and yet
How clay shrinks back from more quiescent clay!
     The very Suicide that pays his debt
At once without instalments (an old way
     Of paying debts, which creditors regret)
Lets out impatiently his rushing breath,
Less from disgust of life than dread of death.

5

‘Tis round him, near him, here, there, every where;
     And there’s a courage which grows out of fear,
Perhaps of all most desperate, which will dare
     The worst to know it:—when the mountains rear
Their peaks beneath your human foot, and there
    You look down o’er the precipice, and drear
The gulf of rock yawns,—you can’t gaze a minute
Without an awful wish to plunge within it.

6

‘Tis true, you don’t—but, pale and struck with terror,
     Retire: but look into your past impression!
And you will find, though shuddering at the mirror
     Of your own thoughts, in all their self confession,
The lurking bias, be it truth or error,
    To the unknown; a secret prepossession,
To plunge with all your fears—but where? You know not,
And that’s the reason why you do—or do not.

7

But what’s this to the purpose? you will say.
     Gent. Reader, nothing; a mere speculation,
For which my sole excuse is—’tis my way,
     Sometimes with and sometimes without occasion
I write what’s uppermost, without delay;
     This narrative is not meant for narration,
But a mere airy and fantastic basis,
To build up common things with common places.

8

You know, or don’t know, that great Bacon saith,
     “Fling up a straw, ‘twill show the way the wind blows”;
And such a straw, borne on by human breath,
     Is Poesy, according as the mind glows;
A paper kite, which flies ‘twixt life and death,
     A shadow which the onward Soul behind throws:
And mine’s a bubble not blown up for praise,
But just to play with, as an infant plays.

9

The world is all before me, or behind;
     For I have seen a portion of that same,
And quite enough for me to keep in mind;—
     Of passions too, I have proved enough to blame,
To the great pleasure of our friends, mankind,
     Who like to mix some slight alloy with fame:
For I was rather famous in my time,
Until I fairly knock’d it up with rhyme.

10

I have brought this world about my ears, and eke
     The other; that’s to say, the Clergy—who
Upon my head have bid their thunders break
    In pious libels by no means a few.
And yet I can’t help scribbling once a week,
     Tiring old readers, nor discovering new.
In youth I wrote, because my mind was full,
And now because I feel it growing dull.