Chapter XV

From my sick-bed gazing upon the west,
Where all the bright effulgencies of day
Lay steeped in sunless vapours, raw and gray,—
Herein (methought) is mournfully exprest
The end of false ambitions, sullen doom
Of my brave hopes, Promethean desires:
Barren and perfumeless, my name expires
Like summer-day setting in joyless gloom.
Yet faint I not in sceptical dismay,
Upheld by the belief that all pure thought
Is deathless, perfect: that the truths out-wrought
By the laborious mind cannot decay,
Being evolutions of that Sovereign Mind
Akin to man’s; yet orbed, exhaustless, undefined.