Cviii

There went Conviction to my soul, that what I took of late For Venice was the world; its Carnival--the state Of mankind, masquerade in life-long permanence For all time, and no one particular feast-day. Whence 'T was easy to infer what meant my late disgust At the brute-pageant, each grotesque of greed and lust And idle hate, and love as impotent for good-- When from my pride of place I passed the interlude In critical review; and what, the wonder that ensued When, from such pinnacled pre-eminence, I found Somehow the proper goal for wisdom was the ground And not the sky,--so, slid sagaciously betimes Down heaven's baluster-rope, to reach the mob of mimes And mummers; whereby came discovery there was just Enough and not too much of hate, love, greed and lust, Could one discerningly but hold the balance, shift The weight from scale to scale, do justice to the drift Of nature, and explain the glories by the shames Mixed up in man, one stuff miscalled by different names According to what stage i' the process turned his rough, Even as I gazed, to smooth--only get close enough! --What was all this except the lesson of a life?