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!

YOUTH AND CALM.

IS death! and peace, indeed, is here,

'TIS

And ease from shame, and rest from fear.

There's nothing can dismarble now

The smoothness of that limpid brow.
But is a calm like this, in truth,

The crowning end of life and youth,
And when this boon rewards the dead,
Are all debts paid, has all been said?
And is the heart of youth so light,
Its step so firm, its eye so bright,
Because on its hot brow there blows
A wind of promise and repose

From the far grave, to which it goes;
Because it has the hope to come,
One day, to harbour in the tomb?
Ah no, the bliss youth dreams is one
For daylight, for the cheerful sun,

For feeling nerves and living breath

Youth dreams a bliss on this side death!

It dreams a rest, if not more deep,

More grateful than this marble sleep;

It hears a voice within it tell:

Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well! 'Tis all perhaps which man acquires,

But 'tis not what our youth desires.

YOUTH'S AGITATIONS.

HEN I shall be divorced, some ten years hence,

WHEN

From this poor present self which I am now; When youth has done its tedious vain expense Of passions that for ever ebb and flow;

Shall I not joy youth's heats are left behind,
And breathe more happy in an even clime?
Ah no! for then I shall begin to find

A thousand virtues in this hated time.

Then I shall wish its agitations back,
And all its thwarting currents of desire;
Then I shall praise the heat which then I lack,
And call this hurrying fever, generous fire;

And sigh that one thing only has been lent
To youth and age in common-discontent.