XXIX

My weary life, that lives unsatisfied

On the foiled off-brink of being e'er but this,

To whom the power to will hath been denied

And the will to renounce doth also miss;

My sated life, with having nothing sated,

In the motion of moving poisèd aye,

Within its dreams from its own dreams abated —

This life let the Gods change or Lake away.

For this endless succession of empty hours,

Like deserts after deserts, voidly one,

Doth undermine the very dreaming powers

And dull even thought's active inaction,

Tainting with fore-unwilled will the dreamed act

Twice thus removed from the unobtained fact.