Excerpt from Maud by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

II.

Long have I

sigh’d for a calm: God grant I may find it at last!

III.

taking revenge too deep for a transient wrong

Growing and fading and growing upon me without a sound,
Luminous, gemlike, ghostlike, deathlike, half the night long
Growing and fading and growing, till I could bear it no more,

IV.

IV.

The Mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow spear’d by the shrike,
And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey.

V.

We are puppets, Man in his pride, and Beauty fair in her flower;
Do we move ourselves, or are moved by an unseen hand at a game
That pushes us off from the board, and others ever succeed?