Chapter XXIII

“And what else are we?” turn’d I once to ask;
“Would God we all could free ourselves from laws;
But half our lives we spend in learning them;
And half in learning how to love them then.
And but in souls that learn life’s laws by heart,
Has wisdom, so it seems, a sway complete.”

“’Tis thus with earthly wisdom,” she rejoin’d;
“But earth is ruled by folly,—idiot child
Of freedom fetter’d. You may live the slave;
But I choose freedom!”

And, as then she left,
“You lawless,” thought I, “will you always prove
The water Undine of my wilderness,
All maddening, with strange metamorphoses,
My faint love thirsting to refresh itself?”—