" Still, aloft
The platform stretches."

There is Happiness. He knows that he believes in it,
by the very blind instinct that bade him forego these
roundels of the ladder unless they led him to some-
thing beyond themselves ; these partial blisses which
he dared not entertain as they offered, and which now
elude him, yet promise a something beyond them-
selves of which he now, for the first time, catches a
glimpse. He concludes that Happiness must consist
in the union of one's own being with what is external
to it

" The Alien turning Native to the soul
Or body."

I am whole, yet for completion demand a Palma,
he says. If the world were equally alien to my soul,

" Twere Happiness to make it one with me ; " but
" Nought is Alien in the world — my Will
Owns all already."

Yet since my Means to correspond with Will fall so
short of the Will itself,



/



48 " SORDELLO : "

" Twas my bond
To tread the very joys that tantalise
Most now, into a grave, never to rise.
