WITH face turned upward to the changeful sky, | |
| I, Fergus, lie, supine in frozen rest; | |
| The maiden morning clouds slip rosily | |
| Unclasped, unclasping, down my granite breast; | |
| The lightning strikes my brow and passes by. | 5 |
| |
| There ’s nothing new beneath the sun, I wot; | |
| I “Fergus” called,—the great preadamite, | |
| Who for my mortal body blindly sought | |
| Rash immortality, and on this height | |
| Stone-bound, forever am and yet am not,— | 10 |
| |
| There ’s nothing new beneath the sun, I say. | |
| Ye pygmies of a later race, who come | |
| And play out your brief generation’s play | |
| Below me, know, I too spent my life’s sum, | |
| And revelled through my short tumultuous day. | 15 |
| |
| O, what is man that he should mouth so grand | |
| Through his poor thousand as his seventy years? | |
| Whether as king I ruled a trembling land, | |
| Or swayed by tongue or pen my meaner peers, | |
| Or earth’s whole learning once did understand,— | 20 |
| |
| What matter? The star-angels know it all. | |
| They who came sweeping through the silent night | |
| And stood before me, yet did not appall: | |
| Till, fighting ’gainst me in their courses bright, | |
| Celestial smote terrestrial.—Hence, my fall. | 25 |
| |
| Hence, Heaven cursed me with a granted prayer; | |
| Made my hill-seat eternal; bade me keep | |
| My pageant of majestic lone despair, | |
| While one by one into the infinite deep | |
| Sank kindred, realm, throne, world: yet I lay there. | 30 |
| |
| There still I lie. Where are my glories fled? | |
| My wisdom that I boasted as divine? | |
| My grand primeval women fair, who shed | |
| Their whole life’s joy to crown one hour of mine, | |
| And lived to curse the love they coveted? | 35 |
| |
| Gone,—gone. Uncounted æons have rolled by, | |
| And still my ghost sits by its corpse of stone, | |
| And still the blue smile of the new-formed sky | |
| Finds me unchanged. Slow centuries crawling on | |
| Bring myriads happy death:—I cannot die. * * * * * | 40 |
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