Page:Hellas, a Lyrical Drama - Shelley (1822).djvu/59

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HELLAS.
39
Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams;
Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor less
The Future and the past are idle shadows
Of thought's eternal flight—they have no being:
Nought is but that which feels itself to be.

Mahmud.
What meanest thou? Thy words stream like a tempest
Of dazzling mist within my brain—they shake
The earth on which I stand, and hang like night
On Heaven above me. What can they avail?
They cast on all things surest, brightest, best,
Doubt, insecurity, astonishment.

Ahasuerus.
Mistake me not! All is contained in each.
Dodona's forest to an acorn's cup
Is that which has been, or will be, to that
Which is—the absent to the present. Thought
Alone, and its quick elements, Will, Passion,
Reason, Imagination, cannot die;
They are, what that which they regard appears,
The stuff whence mutability can weave
All that it hath dominion o'er, worlds, worms,
Empires, and superstitions. What has thought
To do with time, or place, or circumstance?
Would'st thou behold the future?—ask and have!