Afterword

The old enthusiasms
Are dead, quite dead, in me;
Dead the aspiring spasms
Of art and poesy,
That opened magic chasms,
Once, of wild mystery,
In youth’s rich Araby,
Aladdin-wondrous chasms.

The longing and the care
Are mine; and, helplessly,
The heartache and despair
For what can never be.
More than my mortal share
Of sad mortality,
It seems, God gives to me,
More than my mortal share.

O world! O time! O fate!
Remorseless trinity!
Let not your wheel abate
Its iron rotary!--
Turn round! nor make me wait,
Bound to it neck and knee,
Hope’s final agony!--
Turn round! nor make me wait.