I care not whether here or there: to live
In memory and identity : to give
No part of self or soul to Lethe’s water:
To grapple Nature, interpose an “if”
In her machinery of conditioned mood ;
Suspending law, suspending amplitude
Of all Her function; to espouse her daughter
In forced embrace lasciviously rude,
Indecorous, shameful to the eternal “ must” !
Law may be mercy, mercy never just!
Thus I would alter, and divide her ways,
And let her wheels grind themselves down to dust.
One supernatural event—but one! —
Should scale Olympus, shattering the throne
Of the Aégis-bearing Father : and the days
Of all the Universe be fallen and done.
Well then? O sceptred Splendour! dost Thou see
How little means Thy Universe to Me?
How petty looks Thy will to My desire?
Hebe and Hera to Eurydice?
I, knowing all the progress of the earth,
The dim procession, altering death and birth,
The Seven Stairs, the gusts of life in fire
And Love in Life, and all the serpent girth
124