WHAT mortal, when he saw,
Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend,
Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly:
'I have kept uninfringed my nature's law;
The inly-written chart thou gavest me
To guide me, I have steer'd by to the end?'
Ah! let us make no claim
On life's incognisable sea
To too exact a steering of our way!
Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim,
If some fair coast has lured us to make stay,
Or some friend hail'd us to keep company 1-
Ay, we would each fain drive
At random, and not steer by rule!
Weakness! and worse, weakness bestow'd in vain!
Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive,
We rush by coasts where we had lief remain ;
Man cannot, though he would, live chance's fool.
No! as the foaming swath
Of torn-up water, on the main,
Falls heavily away with long-drawn roar
On either side the black deep-furrow'd path
Cut by an onward-labouring vessel's prore,
And never touches the ship-side again;
Even so we leave behind
As, charter'd by some unknown Powers,
We stem across the sea by night-
The joys which were not for our use design'd,
The friends to whom we had no natural right,
The homes that were not. destined to be ours.
TO die be given us, or attain!
Fierce work it were, to do again.
So pilgrims, bound for Mecca, pray'd
At burning noon; so warriors said,
Scarf'd with the cross, who watch'd the miles
Of dust that wreathed their struggling files
Down Lydian mountains; so, when snows
Round Alpine summits eddying rose,
The Goth, bound Rome-wards; so the Hun,
Crouch'd on his saddle, when the sun
Went lurid down o'er flooded plains
Through which the groaning Danube strains
To the drear Euxine ;- -so pray all,
Whom labours, self-ordain'd, enthrall;
Because they to themselves propose
On this side the all-common close
A goal which, gain'd, may give repose.
So pray they; and to stand again.
Where they stood once, to them were pain;
Pain to thread back and to renew
Past straits, and currents long steer'd through.
But milder natures, and more free;
Whom an unblamed serenity
Hath freed from passions, and the state
Of struggle these necessitate;
Whom schooling of the stubborn mind
Hath made, or birth hath found, resign'd-
These mourn not, that their goings pay
Obedience to the passing day.
These claim not every laughing Hour
For handmaid to their striding power;
Each in her turn, with torch uprear'd,
To await their march; and when appear'd,
Through the cold gloom, with measured race,
To usher for a destined space,
(Her own sweet errands all forgone)
The too imperious traveller on!
These, Fausta, ask not this; nor thou,
Time's chafing prisoner, ask it now!
We left, just ten years since, you say,
That wayside inn we left to-day.10
Our jovial host, as forth we fare,
Shouts greeting from his easy chair;
High on a bank our leader stands,
Reviews and ranks his motley bands,
Makes clear our goal to every eye-
The valley's western boundary.
A gate swings to! our tide hath flow'd
Already from the silent road!
The valley-pastures, one by one,
Are threaded, quiet in the sun;
And now beyond the rude stone bridge
Slopes gracious up the western ridge.
Its woody border, and the last
Of its dark upland farms is past;
Cool farms, with open-lying stores,
Under their burnish'd sycamores—
All past! and through the trees we glide
Emerging on the green hill-side.
There climbing hangs, a far-seen sign,
Our wavering, many-colour'd line;
There winds, upstreaming slowly still
Over the summit of the hill.
And now, in front, behold outspread
Those upper regions we must tread!
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