Subsequently they have seemed to reveal a splendid honesty. Although it
has little mysterious and haunting beauty, _The Wild Swans at Coole_ is
indeed a swan song. It is eloquent of final defeat; the following of a
lonely path has ended in the poet's sinking exhausted in a wilderness of
gray. Not even the regret is passionate; it is pitiful.
'I am worn out with dreams,
A weather-worn, marble triton
Among the streams;
And all day long I look
Upon this lady's beauty
As though I had found in book
A pictured beauty,
Pleased to have filled the eyes
Or the discerning ears,
Delighted to be but wise,
For men improve with the years;
And yet, and yet
Is this my dream, or the truth?
O would that we had met
When I had my burning youth;
But I grow old among dreams,
A weather-worn, marble triton
Among the streams.'
It is pitiful because, even now in spite of all his honesty the poet
mistakes the cause of his sorrow. He is worn out not with dreams, but
with the vain effort to master them and submit them to his own creative
energy.
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