Some moralist or mythological poet

Compares the solitary soul to a swan;

I am content with that,

Contented that a troubled mirror show it

Before that brief gleam of its life be gone,

An image of its state;

The wings half spread for flight,

The breast thrust out in pride

Whether to play or to ride

Those winds that clamour of approaching night.

A man in his own secret meditation

Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made

In art or politics;

Some platonist affirms that in the station

Where we should cast off body and trade

The ancient habit sticks,

And that if our works could

But vanish with our breath

That were a lucky death,

For triumph can but mar our solitude.

The swan has leaped into the desolate heaven:

That image can bring wildness, bring a rage

To end all things, to end

What my laborious life imagined, even

The half imagined, the half written page;

O but we dreamed to mend

Whatever mischief seemed

To afflict mankind, but now

That winds of winter blow

Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.