Hellas
Hellas - meaning Summary
A Soul's Inheritance Questioned
The speaker regrets exchanging disciplined wisdom for sensual indulgence and fleeting romancing. He likens his soul to a lute played by every wind, lamenting that youthful, trivial songs have obscured a deeper purpose. He imagines a lost opportunity to climb "sunlit heights" and strike a single clear chord that might reach God, and he questions whether savoring romance has cost him his soul's true inheritance.
Read Complete AnalysesTo drift with every passion till my soul Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play, Is it for this that I have given away Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?- Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll Scrawled over on some boyish holiday With idle songs for pipe and virelay Which do but mar the secret of the whole. Surely that was a time I might have trod The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God; is that time dead? lo! with a little rod I did but touch the honey of romance- And must I lose a soul's inheritance?
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