II

She holds the world within her mighty hand, And lo! it is a toy for babes to toss, And all its shining imagery but dross, To those that in her awful presence stand; As sun-confronting eagles o'er the land That lies below, they send their gaze across The common intervals of gain and loss, And hope's infinitude without a strand.

But he who, on that lonely eminence, Watches too long the whirling of the spheres Through dim eternities, descending thence The voices of his kind no longer hears, And, blinded by the spectacle immense, Journeys alone through all the after years.