But bringing no green leaf, it seeks its ark
With wearied wing, and plumes whose gloss is gone.
Here, too, is traced that love which hath too much
Of heaven in its fine nature for the earth—
Where love pines for a home and finds a grave;
The eagerness which turns to lassitude;
The thirst of praise which ends in bitterness;
Those high aspirings which but rise to find
What weight is on their wings; and that keen sense
Of the wide difference between ourselves
And those who are our fellows; and which marks
A withered ring around all confidence:
We cannot soothe the pain we do not know.
The heart is sacrificed upon the shrine
Of mental power—at least its happiness.
A whole life's bitterness is in the song
Whose words, too truly, are the singer's own.
Fragment of Corinne's Song at Naples.
"Thus, shrinking from the desert spread around,
Doth Genius wander through the world, and finds
No likeness to himself—no echo given
By Nature: and the common crowd but hold
As madness that desire of the rapt soul
Which finds not in this world enough of air,
Of high enthusiasm, or of hope!
For Destiny compels exalted minds;
The poet whose imagination draws
Y
