Ask how your brave cicada on the bough
Keeps the long sweet insistence of his cry;
Ask how the Pleiads steer across the night 5
In their serene unswerving mighty course;
Ask how the wood-flowers waken to the sun,
Unsummoned save by some mysterious word;
Ask how the wandering swallows find your eaves
Upon the rain-wind with returning spring; 10
Ask who commands the ever-punctual tide
To keep the pendulous rhythm of the sea;
And you shall know what leads the heart of man
To the far haven of his hopes and fears.
LXIX
Like a tall forest were their spears,
Their banners like a silken sea,
When the great host in splendour passed
Across the crimson sinking sun.
And then the bray of brazen horns 5
Arose above their clanking march,
As the long waving column filed
Into the odorous purple dusk.
O lover, in this radiant world
Whence is the race of mortal men, 10
So frail, so mighty, and so fond,
That fleets into the vast unknown?
LXX
My lover smiled, "O friend, ask not
The journey's end, nor whence we are.
That whistling boy who minds his goats
So idly in the grey ravine,
"The brown-backed rower drenched with spray, 5
The lemon-seller in the street,
And the young girl who keeps her first
Wild love-tryst at the rising moon,--
"Lo, these are wiser than the wise.
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