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The World and the Quietist

TO CRITIAS

Why, when the World’s great mind  
   Hath finally inclin’d,  
Why, you say, Critias, be debating still?  
   Why, with these mournful rhymes  
   Learn’d in more languid climes,    
   Blame our activity,  
   Who, with such passionate will,  
   Arc, what we mean to be?  
 
   Critias, long since, I know,  
   (For Fate decreed it so,)      
Long since the World hath set its heart to live.  
   Long since with credulous zeal  
     It turns Life’s mighty wheel;  
   Still doth for labourers send,  
     Who still their labour give;  
   And still expects an end.  
 
   Yet, as the wheel flies round,  
   With no ungrateful sound  
Do adverse voices fall on the World’s ear.  
   Deafen’d by his own stir      
   The rugged Labourer  
   Caught not till then a sense  
   So glowing and so near  
     Of his omnipotence.  
 
   So, when the feast grew loud    
   In Susa’s palace proud,  
A white-rob’d slave stole to the Monarch’s side.  
   He spoke: the Monarch heard:  
   Felt the slow-rolling word  
   Swell his attentive soul.        
   Breath’d deeply as it died,  
     And drain’d his mighty bowl.
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