To see and know absorbs the whole of life's domain. Have I leisure to devote myself to poesy? Such reams of history! Bonaparte! Charlemagne! Here the Prussians, over there Louis Second, the Stammerer. In all things am I versed, or rather wish to be, hoping, with studious care, a point at last to reach where I shall not confound the oak-tree with the beech, noting the salient marks of bark and leaf. To me the briar is colocynth, the leek ambrosia fair. Have I leisure to devote myself to poesy? And to see! I dote upon it to frenzy. None has got a better eye to scan, as it is and as it's not, this infinite universe. My visions swarm. I love to focus them, despite those gypsy ones that rove . . . the flight of a hill beneath the panic of a hare; great banks of floating clouds uniting Dream to Dream, the pomp of barges slow, in evening's purple gleam, heaven's blue that's laughing there in the blue of the washing-place, the images of Kings on tavern bills-of-fare, or this sluggish, dead canal with its eternal brink, and the forgotten drink beneath the arbour chill, near the crochet-hook -- my heart! -- and beside the salad dish, and my sweetheart plucking there, with a resigned ennui, this thin cock (ah! to strip the daisies white that way): I see her eyes ashine with tear-drops in the night, as for me, I scale a fish above the kitten grey. . . . Our lamp lights up, is this the effect of chance? . . . afar, with a sad and poignant strain the air of heaven is rife . . . the Great Bear is the harp of the Chateau Gaillard. . . . Have I leisure to devote myself to poesy? The wish to see and know will have laid waste my life. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...JEWISH HYMN IN BABYLON by HENRY HART MILMAN MESSMATES by HENRY JOHN NEWBOLT INSPIRATION (2) by HENRY DAVID THOREAU THE MYSTIC TRUMPETER by WALT WHITMAN COMRADES by GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY THE LOST LADY: SONG by WILLIAM BERKLEY MR. STOTHARD TO MR. CROMEK by WILLIAM BLAKE |