XXXV.

Perchance to benefit mankind,

Or but for fame he saw the light;

His lyre, to silence now consigned,

Resounding through all ages might

Have echoed to eternity.

With worldly honours, it may be,

Fortune the poet had repaid.

It may be that his martyred shade

Carried a truth divine away;

That, for the century designed,

Had perished a creative mind,

And past the threshold of decay,

He ne'er shall hear Time's eulogy,

The blessings of humanity.

XXXVI.

Or, it may be, the bard had passed

A life in common with the rest;

Vanished his youthful years at last,

The fire extinguished in his breast,

In many things had changed his life -

The Muse abandoned, ta'en a wife,

Inhabited the country, clad

In dressing-gown, a cuckold glad:

A life of fact, not fiction, led -

At forty suffered from the gout,

Eaten, drunk, gossiped and grown stout:

And finally, upon his bed

Had finished life amid his sons,

Doctors and women, sobs and groans.

XXXVII.

But, howsoe'er his lot were cast,

Alas! the youthful lover slain,

Poetical enthusiast,

A friendly hand thy life hath ta'en!

There is a spot the village near