"@3What though the Isthmus lacks an ocean-gate, Delve not the soil! If Jove had willed it so, His watchful power had opened long ago The channelled pathways of a billowy strait.@1" Thus spake the Cnydian Oracle but too late; For men are blinder than blind winds that blow Round midnight waves, yet idly dream they know Some Hermes' trick to steal the goods of fate. Fools! trench your Isthmus, delving fast and deep; And as ye toil uplift your boastful breath O'er swift inrushings of the turbulent sea -- Too swift, by heaven! for, lo! its treacherous sweep O'erwhelms the graded dykes, the opposing lea, While ye that mocked at fate, fate whirls to death! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TOM'S GARLAND: UPON THE UNEMPLOYED by GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS SONNET TO ALISA ROCK by JOHN KEATS A FAREWELL TO TOBACCO by CHARLES LAMB SONNET: DANTE (2) by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW WHEN by SARAH CHAUNCEY WOOLSEY THE SHIPMAN'S TALE by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH THE WOLF AND SHEPHERDS; A FABLE by JAMES BEATTIE OUT OF THE SILENCE OF MY DREAMS by WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE |