Fie, fie! you visionary things

Fie, fie! you visionary things, ye motes that dance in sunny glow, Who base and build Eternities on briefest moment here below;

Who pass through Life liked cagèd birds, the captives of a despot will; Still wond’ring How and When and Why, and Whence and Whither, wond’ring still;

Still wond’ring how the Marvel came because two coupling mammals chose To slake the thirst of fleshly love, and thus the “Immortal Being” rose;

Wond’ring the Babe with staring eyes, perforce compel’d from night to day, Gript in the giant grasp of Life like gale-born dust or wind-wrung spray;

Who comes imbecile to the world ’mid double danger, groans, and tears; The toy, the sport, the waif and stray of passions, error, wrath and fears;

Who knows not Whence he came nor Why, who kens not Whither bound and When, Yet such is Allah’s choicest gift, the blessing dreamt by foolish men;

Who step by step perforce returns to couthless youth, wan, white and cold, Lisping again his broken words till all the tale be fully told:

Wond’ring the Babe with quenchèd orbs, an oldster bow’d by burthening years, How ’scaped the skiff an hundred storms; how ’scaped the thread a thousand shears;

How coming to the Feast unbid, he found the gorgeous table spread With the fair-seeming Sodom-fruit, with stones that bear the shape of bread:

How Life was nought but ray of sun that clove the darkness thick and blind, The ravings of the reckless storm, the shrieking of the rav’ening wind;

How lovely visions ’guiled his sleep, aye fading with the break of morn, Till every sweet became a sour, till every rose became a thorn;

Till dust and ashes met his eyes wherever turned their saddened gaze; The wrecks of joys and hopes and loves, the rubbish of his wasted days;

How every high heroic Thought that longed to breathe empyrean air, Failed of its feathers, fell to earth, and perisht of a sheer despair;

How, dower’d with heritage of brain, whose might has split the solar ray, His rest is grossest coarsest earth, a crown of gold on brow of clay;

This House whose frame be flesh and bone, mortar’d with blood and faced with skin, The home of sickness, dolours, age; unclean without, impure within:

Sans ray to cheer its inner gloom, the chambers haunted by the Ghost, Darkness his name, a cold dumb Shade stronger than all the heav’nly host.

This tube, an enigmatic pipe, whose end was laid before begun, That lengthens, broadens, shrinks and breaks; —puzzle, machine, automaton;

The first of Pots the Potter made by Chrysorrhoas’ blue-green wave;* Methinks I see him smile to see what guerdon to the world he gave!