This is the thought which animates the
"Fragment of an 'Antigone:'" "The World and the Quietest" has no
other scope than this:--
"Critias, long since, I know,
(For fate decreed it so),
Long since the world hath set its heart to live.
Long since, with credulous zeal,
It turns life's mighty wheel:
Still doth for laborers send;
Who still their labor give.
And still expects an end."--p. 109.
This principle is brought a step futher into the relations of life in
"The Sick King in Bokhara," the following passage from which claims
to be quoted, not less for its vividness as description, than in
illustration of this thought:--
"In vain, therefore, with wistful eyes
Gazing up hither, the poor man
Who loiters by the high-heaped booths
Below there in the Registan
"Says: 'Happy he who lodges there!
With silken raiment, store of rice,
And, for this drought, all kinds of fruits,
Grape-syrup, squares of colored ice,
"'With cherries served in drifts of snow.'
In vain hath a king power to build
Houses, arcades, enamelled mosques,
And to make orchard-closes filled
"With curious fruit trees brought from far,
With cisterns for the winter rain;
And, in the desert, spacious inns
In divers places;--if that pain
"Is not more lightened which he feels,
If his will be not satisfied:
And that it be not from all time
The law is planted, to abide.
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