GROWING OLD. "HAT is it to grow old? WH Is it to lose the glory of the form, The lustre of the eye? Is it for beauty to forego her wreath? Not our bloom only, but our strength decay? Is it to feel each limb Grow stiffer, every function less exact, Each nerve more weakly strung? Yes, this, and more! but not, Ah, 't is not what in youth we dreamed 't would be! "T is not to have our life Mellowed and softened as with sunset glow, A golden day's decline! "T is not to see the world As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, And heart profoundly stirred; And weep, and feel the fulness of the past, The years that are no more! It is to spend long days And not once feel that we were ever young. It is to add, immured In the hot prison of the present, month To month with weary pain. It is to suffer this, And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel. Deep in our hidden heart Festers the dull remembrance of a change, But no emotion, — none. - last stage of all When we are frozen up within, and quite The phantom of ourselves, To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man. THE PROGRESS OF POESY. YOUTH A VARIATION. rambles on life's arid mount, And strikes the rock, and finds the vein, And brings the water from the fount, The man mature with labor chops Ran off and vanished out of hand. And then the old man totters nigh A NAMELESS EPITAPH. HIS sentence have I left behind: THIS An aching body, and a mind Not wholly clear, nor wholly blind, Too keen to rest, too weak to find, That travails sore, and brings forth wind, Are God's worst portion to mankind. Another. Ask not my name, O friend! That Being only, which hath known each man From the beginning, can Remember each unto the end. THE LAST WORD. REEP into thy narrow bed, CREE Creep, and let no more be said! Vain thy onset! all stands fast; Thou thyself must break at last. Let the long contention cease! Let them have it how they will! Thou art tired; best be still! They out-talked thee, hissed thee, tore thee. Better men fared thus before thee; Fired their ringing shot and passed, Hotly charged and broke at last. Charge once more, then, and be dumb! Find thy body by the wall. |