_The Soul._

Dentro un pugno di cervel.

A handful of brain holds me: I consume So much that all the books the world contains, Cannot allay my furious famine-pains:-- What feasts were mine! Yet hunger is my doom. With one world Aristarchus fed my greed; This finished, others Metrodorus gave; Yet, stirred by restless yearning, still I crave: The more I know, the more to learn I need. Thus I'm an image of that Sire in whom All beings are, like fishes in the sea; That one true object of the loving mind. Reasoning may reach Him, like a shaft shot home; The Church may guide; but only blest is he Who loses self in God, God's self to find.

V.