Yes, plucked!—Phew! I'm plucked clean enough indeed.
Well, well, I've a trifle still left in reserve;
I've a little in America, a little in my pocket;
So I won't be quite driven to beg my bread.—
And at bottom this middle condition is best.
I'm no longer a slave to my coachman and horses;
I haven't to fret about postchaise or baggage;
I am master, in short, of the situation.—
What path should I choose? Many paths lie before me;
And a wise man is known from a fool by his choice.
My business life is a finished chapter;
My love-sports, too, are a cast-off garment.
I feel no desire to live back like a crab.
"Forward or back, and it's just as far;
Out or in, and it's just as strait,"—
So I seem to have read in some luminous[1] work.—
I'll try something new, then; ennoble my course;
Find a goal worth the labour and money it costs.
Shall I write my life without dissimulation,—
A book for guidance and imitation?
Or, stay! I have plenty of time at command;—
What if, as a travelling scientist,
I should study past ages and time's voracity?
Ay, sure enough, <g>that</g> is the thing for me!
Legends I read e'en in childhood's days,
And since then I've kept up that branch of learning.—
I will follow the path of the human race!
Like a feather I'll float on the stream of history
Make it all live again, as in a dream,—
See the heroes battling for truth and right,
- ↑ Literally, "spirituel."
