Seest us change while we live ;
Seest our dreams, one by one,
Seest our errors depart;
Watchest us, Nature! throughout,
Mild and inscrutably calm.

Well for us that we change!
Well for us that the power
Which in our morning-prime
Saw the mistakes of our youth,
Sweet, and forgiving, and good,
Sees the contrition of age!

Behold, O Nature, this pair!
See them to-night where they stand,
Not with the halo of youth
Crowning their brows with its light,
Not with the sunshine of hope,

Not with the rapture of spring,

Which they had of old, when they stood Years ago at my side

In this self-same garden, and said:

"We are young, and the world is ours; Man, man is the king of the world!

Fools that these mystics are
Who prate of Nature! for she
Hath neither beauty, nor warmth,
Nor life, nor emotion, nor power.
But man has a thousand gifts,
And the generous dreamer invests
The senseless world with them all.
Nature is nothing; her charm
Lives in our eyes which can paint,
Lives in our hearts which can feel."

Thou, O Nature, wast mute,

Mute as of old! days flew,

Days and years; and Time

With the ceaseless stroke of his wings
Brush'd off the bloom from their soul.

Clouded and dim grew their eye,
Languid their heart—for youth
Quicken'd its pulses no more.
Slowly, within the walls

Of an ever-narrowing world,

They droop'd, they grew blind, they grew old.

Thee and their youth in thee,

Nature! they saw no more.

Murmur of living,

Stir of existence,

Soul of the world!

Make, oh, make yourselves felt

To the dying spirit of youth!

Come, like the breath of the spring!

Leave not a human soul

To grow old in darkness and pain!
Only the living can feel you,
But leave us not while we live!

Here they stand to-night-
Here, where this grey balustrade
Crowns the still valley; behind

Is the castled house, with its woods,
Which shelter'd their childhood-the sun

On its ivied windows; a scent

From the grey-wall'd gardens, a breath
Of the fragrant stock and the pink,

Perfumes the evening air.

Their children play on the lawns.
They stand and listen; they hear
The children's shouts, and at times,
Faintly, the bark of a dog

From a distant farm in the hills.
Nothing besides! in front

The wide, wide valley outspreads
To the dim horizon, reposed

In the twilight, and bathed in dew,
Corn-field and hamlet and copse
Darkening fast; but a light,
Far off, a glory of day,

Still plays on the city spires;

And there in the dusk by the walls,
With the grey mist marking its course
Through the silent, flowery land,
On, to the plains, to the sea,
Floats the imperial stream.

Well I know what they feel!
They gaze, and the evening wind
Plays on their faces; they gaze-
Airs from the Eden of youth
Awake and stir in their soul;

The past returns—they feel

What they are, alas! what they were.

They, not Nature, are changed.

Well I know what they feel!

Hush, for tears

Begin to steal to their eyes!

Hush, for fruit

Grows from such sorrow as theirs!

And they remember,

With piercing, untold anguish,

The proud boasting of their youth.
And they feel how Nature was fair.
And the mists of delusion,

And the scales of habit,
Fall away from their eyes;
And they see, for a moment,
Stretching out, like the desert
In its weary, unprofitable length,
Their faded, ignoble lives.

While the locks are yet brown on thy head,

While the soul still looks through thine eyes,

While the heart still pours

The mantling blood to thy cheek,

Sink, O youth, in thy soul!

Yearn to the greatness of Nature;

Rally the good in the depths of thyself!

PALLADIUM

SET where the upper streams of Simois flow
Was the Palladium, high 'mid rock and wood;
And Hector was in Ilium, far below,

And fought, and saw it not-but there it stood !

It stood, and sun and moonshine rain'd their light
On the pure columns of its glen-built hall.
Backward and forward roll'd the waves of fight
Round Troy-but while this stood, Troy could not fall.

So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul.

Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air;

Cold plashing, past it, crystal waters roll;
We visit it by moments, ah, too rare!

We shall renew the battle in the plain
To-morrow ;-red with blood will Xanthus be ;
Hector and Ajax will be there again,
Helen will come upon the wall to see.

Then we shall rust in shade, or shine in strife,
And fluctuate 'twixt blind hopes and blind despairs,
And fancy that we put forth all our life,
And never know how with the soul it fares.

Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high,
Upon our life a ruling effluence send.
And when it fails, fight as we will, we die;
And while it lasts, we cannot wholly end.

PROGRESS

THE Master stood upon the mount, and taught.

He saw a fire in his disciples' eyes;

"The old law," they cried, "is wholly come to nought, Behold the new world rise!"

"Was it," the Lord then said, "with scorn ye saw
The old law observed by Scribes and Pharisees?
I say unto you, see ye keep that law

More faithfully than these!

"Too hasty heads for ordering worlds, alas! Think not that I to annul the law have will'd; No jot, no tittle from the law shall pass,

Till all have been fulfill'd."