Youth and Age.
VERSE, a breeze mid blossoms straying,
Where hope clung feeding like a bee—
Both were mine! Life went a-Maying
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,
When I was young!
When I was young?—Ah, woful when.
Ah! for the change 'twixt Now and Then!
This breathing house not built with hands,
This body that does me grievous wrong,
O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands
How lightly then it flashed along:
Like those trim skiffs unknown of yore,
On winding lakes and rivers wide,
That ask no aid of sail or oar,
That fear no spite of wind or tide !
Naught cared this body for wind or weather,
When Youth and I lived in it together,
Flowers are lovely: Love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
O! the joys that came down shower-like,
Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,
Ere I was old!
Ere I was old? Ah, woful ere,
Which tells me Youth's no longer here!
O youth! for years so many and sweet
'Tis known that Thea and I were one;
I'll think it but a fond con seit-
It cannot be that thou art gone!
Thy vesper-bell hath not yet tolled:
And thou wert aye a masker bold!
What strange disguise hast now put on
To make believe that thou art gone?
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this altered size:
But spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!
Life is but thought: so think I will
That youth and I are housemates still.
Dewdrops are the gems of morning,
But the tears of mournful eve!
Where no hope is, life's a warning
That only serves to make us grieve
When we are old:
-That only serves to make us grieve
With oft and tedious taking-leave,
Like some poor nigh-related guest
That may not rudely be dismissed,
Yet hath outstayed his welcome-while,
And tells the jest without the smile.
SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE.
BETWEEN two worlds life hovers, like a star
'Twixt night and morn upon the horizon's verge:
How little do we know that which we are!
How less what we may be! The eternal surge
Of time and tide rolls on, and bears afar
Our bubbles; as the old burst, new emerge,
Lashed from the foam of ages; while the graves
Of empires heave but like some passing waves.
PICTURE OF PEEL CASTLE IN A STORM. 215
On a Picture of Peel Castle in a Storm.
(Painted by Sir George Beaumont.)
WAS thy neighbor once, thou rugged pile!
Four summer-weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy form was sleeping on a glassy sea.
So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!
So like, so very like was day to day!
Whene'er I looked, thy image still was there;
It trembled, but it never passed away.
How perfect was the calm! It seemed no sleep,
No mood which season takes away or brings:
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.
Ah! then if mine had been the painter's hand
To express what then I saw, and add the gleam,
The light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration, and the poet's dream,—
I would have planted thee, thou hoary pile,
Amid a world how different from this!
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile,
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.
A picture had it been of lasting ease,
Elysian quiet without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
Or merely silent Nature's breathing life.
Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
Such picture would I at that time have made;
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
A steadfast peace that might not be betrayed.
So once it would have been;-'tis so no more;
I have submitted to a new control;
A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
A deep distress hath humanized my soul.
Not for a moment could I now behold
A smiling sea, and be what I have been; The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old;
This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.
Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the friend,
If he had lived, of him whom I deplore,
This work of thine I blame not, but commend;
This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.
O'tis a passionate work!—yet wise and well,
Well chosen is the spirit that is here:
That hulk which labors in the deadly swell,
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear!
And this huge castle, standing here sublime,
I love to see the look with which it braves
--Cased in the unfeeling armor of old time—
The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.
Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone,
Housed in a dream at distance from the kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,
Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind.
But welcome, fortitude and patient cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne, Such sights, or worse, as are before me here:Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
'HEN another life is added
To the heaving, turbid mass;
When another breath of being
Stains creation's tarnished glass;
When the first cry, weak and piteous,
Heralds long-enduring pain,
And a soul from non-existence
Springs, that ne'er can die again;
When the mother's passionate welcome,
Sorrow-like, bursts forth in tears,
And a sire's self-gratulation
Prophesies of future years,—
It is well we cannot see
What the end shall be.
When across the infant features
Trembles the faint dawn of mind,
And the heart looks from the windows
Of the eyes that were so blind;
When the inarticulate murmurs
Syllable each swaddled thought,
To the fond ear of affection
With a boundless promise fraught;
Kindling great hopes for to-morrow
From that dull, uncertain ray,
As by glimmering of the twilight
Is foreshown the perfect day,-
It is well we cannot see
What the end shall be.
When the boy, upon the threshold
Of his all-comprising home,
Puts aside the arm maternal
That enlocks him ere he roam;
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