Sonnet IV.

_THE SOUL._
_Dentro un pugno di cervel._
A handful of brain holds me: I consume
So much that all the books the world contains,
Cannot allay my furious famine-pains:--
What feasts were mine! Yet hunger is my doom.
With one world Aristarchus fed my greed;
This finished, others Metrodorus gave;
Yet, stirred by restless yearning, still I crave:
The more I know, the more to learn I need.
Thus I'm an image of that Sire in whom
All beings are, like fishes in the sea;
That one true object of the loving mind.
Reasoning may reach Him, like a shaft shot home;
The Church may guide; but only blest is he
Who loses self in God, God's self to find.