Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (71)

    [Plotinus, the Greek philosopher, had a certain proper mode of ecstasy¹, whereby, as Porphyry saith, his soul, becoming free from his deathly flesh, was made one with the Spirit that is in the World.]

    ALAS², the path is lost, we cannot leave Our bright, our clouded life, and pass away As through strewn clouds, that stain the quiet eve, To heights remoter of the purer day. The soul may not, returning whence she came, Bathe herself deep in Being, and forget The joys that fever, and the cares that fret³, Made once more one with the eternal flame That breathes in all things ever more the same. She would be young again, thus drinking deep Of her old life； and this has been, men say, But this we know not, who have only sleep To soothe⁴ us, sleep more terrible than day, Where dead delights, and fair lost faces stray, To make us weary at our wakening； And of that long-lost path to the Divine We dream, as some Greek shepherd erst might sing, Half credulous⁵, of easy Proserpine And of the lands that lie 'beneath the day's decline.'