As hearts beat on to doing; ’tis not so—­
Malice it is not.  Is it carelessness? 
Still, no.  If care—­where is the sign?  I ask,
And get no answer, and agree in sum,
0 king, with thy profound discouragement, 270
Who seest the wider but to sigh the more. 
Most progress is most failure:  thou sayest well.

The last point now:—­thou dost except a case—­
Holding joy not impossible to one
With artist-gifts—­to such a man as I
Who leave behind me living works indeed;
For, such a poem, such a painting lives. 
What? dost thou verily trip upon a word,
Confound the accurate view of what joy is
(Caught somewhat clearer by my eyes than thine) 280
With feeling joy? confound the knowing how
And showing how to live (my faculty)
With actually living?—­Otherwise
Where is the artist’s vantage o’er the king? 
Because in my great epos I display
How divers men young, strong, fair, wise, can act—­
Is this as though I acted? if I paint,
Carve the young Phoebus, am I therefore young? 
Methinks I’m older that I bowed myself
The many years of pain that taught me art! 290
Indeed, to know is something, and to prove
How all this beauty might be enjoyed, is more;
But, knowing naught, to enjoy is something too. 
Yon rower, with the moulded muscles there,
Lowering the sail, is nearer it than I.
I can write love-odes:  thy fair slave’s an ode. 
I get to sing of love, when grown too gray
For being beloved:  she turns to that young man,
The muscles all a-ripple on his back. 
I know the joy of kingship:  well, thou art king! 300

“But,” sayest thou—­(and I marvel, I repeat,
To find thee trip on such a mere word) “what
Thou writest, paintest, stays; that does not die: 
Sappho survives, because we sing her songs,
And AEschylus, because we read his plays!”
Why, if they live still, let them come and take
Thy slave in my despite, drink from thy cup,
Speak in my place.  Thou diest while I survive? 
Say rather that my fate is deadlier still,
In this, that every day my sense of joy 310
Grows more acute, my soul (intensified
By power and insight) more enlarged, more keen;
While every day my hairs fall more and more,
My hand shakes, and the heavy years increase—­
The horror quickening still from year to year,
The consummation coming past escape
When I shall know most, and yet least enjoy—­
When all my works wherein I prove my worth,
Being present still to mock me in men’s mouths,
Alive still, in the praise of such as thou, 320
I, I the feeling, thinking, acting man,
The man who loved his life so over-much,
Sleep in my urn.  It is so horrible,
I dare at times imagine to my need
Some future state revealed to us by Zeus,
Unlimited in capability
For joy, as this is in desire for joy,