Have thought that my secret was theirs,
Have dream'd that I lived but for them,
That they were my glory and joy.-

They are dust, they are changed, they are gone!
I remain !'

[DRAM. & LYR.]

THE YOUTH OF MAN.

WE, O Nature, depart;

Thou survivest us! this,

This, I know, is the law.
Yes, but more than this,

Thou who seest us die

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, For man is the king of the world! Fools that these mystics are

Who prate of Nature! but 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,