Classic Poem

While knowledge and high wisdom yet were young,
Through Sicily of old, from tryst to tryst,
Wandered with sad-set brow and eloquent tongue,
The melancholy, austere rhapsodist:
" All my life long, " he cried, " by many ways
I follow truth where devious footmarks fall;
Now I am old, and still my spirit strays,
Mocked and eluded, lost amid the All. "
That was Mind's youth, and ages long ago,
And still thine hunger, O Xenophanes,
Preys on the hearts of men; and to and fro,
They probe the same implacable mysteries:
The same vast toils oppress them, and they bear
The same unquenchable hope, the same despair.