"We
always meet when my heart is thrilled,
And vast emotions stir it;
When through my brain in splendour flash
The lightnings of the spirit.
dt
text .
•
note.
•
•
11
O
wherefore is thy gaze so fixed ?
With what design intrudst thou ?
And what hast thou gleaming beneath thy cloak?
Who art thou, and what wouldst thou ?"
dt
text .
•
x
12
With
the utmost coolness he made reply,—
He was even a trifle phlegmatic,—
"Adjure me not, for Heaven's sake,
And please to bc less emphatic.
dt
text .
•
x
13
"I
am no ghost of an age gone by,
No spectre pale and dusty,
O was never appealed to by rhetoric,
My philosophy's rather rusty.
dt
text .
•
x
14
"Nor
am I practical—rather was
For a quiet life and a still meant,
Yet know, that whatever thy soul conceives,
I am charged with its fulfilment.
dt
text .
•
x
15
"The
years may drift, but I never rest
Till thy thoughts have been translated
Into deeds. 'Tis thine to think; I act.
Each does as it was fated.
dt
text .
•
x
16
"In
Rome, in advance of the consul they bore
An axe, let me remind thee;
To-day thou hast thy lictor too,
But the axe is borne behind thee.
dt
text .
17
"I
am thy lictor and walk in thy wake
With the hatchet brightly gleaming.
I am the deed evolved at last
From thy musing and thy dreaming."
