So all the people, seeing me grow old And prosperous, held me wise, and spread abroad Strange fables, growing day by day more strange-- How I deceived the very gods. They thought That I was blest, remembering not the wear Of anxious thought, the growing sum of pain, The failing ear and eye, the slower limbs, Whose briefer name is Age: and yet I trow I was not all unhappy, though I knew It was too late to enjoy, and though my store Increased not as my greed--nay, even sunk down A little, year by year. Till, last of all, When now my time was come and I had grown A little tired of living, a trivial hurt Laid me upon my bed; and as I mused On my long life and all its villanies, The wickedness I did, the blood I shed, The guile, the frauds of years--they came with news, One now, and now another; how my schemes Were crushed, my enterprises lost, my toil And labour all in vain. Day after day They brought these tidings, while I longed to rise And stay the tide of ill, and raved to know I could not. At the last the added sum Of evil, like yon great rock poised awhile Uncertain, gathered into one, o'erwhelmed My feeble strength, and left me ruined and lost, And showed me all I was, and all the depth And folly of my sin, and racked my brain, And sank me in despair and misery, And broke my heart and slew me. Therefore 'tis I spend the long, long centuries which have come Between me and my sin, in such dread tasks As that thou sawest. In the soul I sinned: In body and soul I suffer. What I bade My minions do to others, that of woe I bear myself; and in the pause of ill, As now, I know again the bitter pang Of failure, which of old pierced thro' my soul And left me to despair. The pain of mind Is fiercer far than any bodily ill, And both are mine--the pang of torture-pain Always recurring; and, far worse, the pang Of consciousness of black sins sinned in vain-- The doom of constant failure. Will, fierce Will! Thou parent of unrest and toil and woe, Measureless effort! growing day by day To force strong souls along the giddy steep That slopes to the pit of Hell, where effort serves Only to speed destruction! Yet I know Thou art not, as some hold, the primal curse Which doth condemn us; since thou bearest in thee No power to satisfy thyself; but rather, The spring of act, whereby in earth and heaven Both men and gods do breathe and live and are, Since Life is Act and not to Do is Death-- I do not blame thee: but to work in vain Is bitterest penalty: to find at last The soul all fouled with sin and stained with blood In vain; ah, this is hell indeed--the hell Of lost and striving souls!" Then as I passed, The halting figure bent itself again To the old task, and up the rugged steep Thrust the great rock with groanings. Horror chained My parting footsteps, like a nightmare dream Which holds us that we flee not, with wide eyes That loathe to see, yet cannot choose but gaze Till all be done. Slowly, with dreadful toil And struggle and strain, and bleeding hands and knees, And more than mortal strength, against the hill He pressed, the wretched one! till with long pain He trembled on the summit, a gaunt form, With that great rock above him, poised and strained, Now gaining, now receding, now in act To win the summit, now borne down again, And then the inevitable crash--the mass Leaping from crag to crag. But ere it ceased In dreadful silence, and the low groan came, My limbs were loosed with one convulsive bound; I hid my face within my hands, and fled, Surfeit with horror.