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THE "PENSEUR"
Inward and inward still his vision sinks.
What does he here?—He thinks!
Thought is the travail that absorbs him thus;
Himself the workshop, most mysterious,
Wherein are wrought what human strengths there be.
Detached, aloof, with eyes that seem to stare
Beyond us and beyond apparent things,
He gazes far into futurity,
And doth with gods unbourned horizons share.
For thoughts, upborne on never-tiring wings,
Boldly adventure regions foul and fair:
To Hades sink, then rise to Heaven again,
Still finding everywhere
The mystic threads whereof are joy and pain
Shaped in the penetralia of the brain!
