How Life was nought but ray of sun that clove the darkness thick and blind,
The ravings of the reckless storm, the shrieking of the rav’ening wind;

How lovely visions ’guiled his sleep, aye fading with the break of morn,
Till every sweet became a sour, till every rose became a thorn;

Till dust and ashes met his eyes wherever turned their saddened gaze;
The wrecks of joys and hopes and loves, the rubbish of his wasted days;

How every high heroic Thought that longed to breathe empyrean air,
Failed of its feathers, fell to earth, and perisht of a sheer despair;

How, dower’d with heritage of brain, whose might has split the solar ray,
His rest is grossest coarsest earth, a crown of gold on brow of clay;