To follow the fox at the hounds’ tails
And at their baying move a tailor’s inch
To follow, wild as the chicken stealer,
Scent through the clutches of the heather,
Leads to fool’s paradise where the redcoated killer
Deserves no brush, but a fool’s ambush.
Following the nose down dell, up rise
Into the map-backed hills where paths
Cross all directions, bracken points to the skies,
Leads, too, to a lead pit, whinny and fall,
No fox, no good, fool’s, not a fox’s, hole,
And that is the reward of labour
Through heath and heather at the mind’s will.
To follow the nose if the nose goes
Wisely at the dogs’ tails, leads
Through easier heather to the foul lair
Over a road thick with the bones of words.
If hunting means anything more than the chase
On a mare’s back of a mare’s nest or a goose,
Then only over corpses shall the feet tread,
Crunching the already broken,
And this way leads to good and bad,
Where more than snails are friends.

The sole true Something—This! In Limbo's Den
It frightens Ghosts, as here Ghosts frighten men.
Thence cross'd unseiz'd—and shall some fated hour
Be pulveris'd by Demogorgon's power,
And given as poison to annihilate souls—
Even now it shrinks them—they shrink in as Moles
(Nature's mute monks, live mandrakes of the ground)
Creep back from Light—then listen for its sound;—
See but to dread, and dread they know not why—
The natural alien of their negative eye.

'Tis a strange place, this Limbo!— not a Place,
Yet name it so;— where Time and weary Space
Fettered from flight, with night-mare sense of fleeing,
Strive for their last crepuscular half-being;—
Lank Space, and scytheless Time with branny hands
Barren and soundless as the measuring sands,
Not mark'd by flit of Shades,—unmeaning they
As moonlight on the dial of the day!
But that is lovely—looks like Human Time,—
An Old Man with a steady look sublime,
That stops his earthly task to watch the skies;
But he is blind—a Statue hath such eyes;—
Yet having moonward turn'd his face by chance,
Gazes the orb with moon-like countenance,
With scant white hairs, with foretop bald and high,
He gazes still, — his eyeless face all eye;—
As 'twere an organ full of silent sight,
His whole face seemeth to rejoice in light!
Lip touching lip, all moveless, bust and limb—
He seems to gaze at that which seems to gaze on him!
No such sweet sights doth Limbo den immure,
Wall'd round, and made a spirit-jail secure,
By the mere horror of blank Naught-at-all,
Whose circumambience doth these ghosts enthral.
A lurid thought is growthless, dull Privation,
Yet that is but a Purgatory curse;
Hell knows a fear far worse,
A fear—a future state;— 'tis positive Negation!