 | The Poetical Works of (Richard Monckton Milnes) Lord Houghton |  |
213
GRAVE TEMPERAMENTS.
To live for present life, and feel no crime,—To see in life a merry-morrice craft,
Where he has done the best who most has laughed,
Is Youth's fit heaven, nor thus the less sublime:
But not to all men, in their best of prime,
Is given by Nature this miraculous draught
Of inward happiness, which, hourly quaffed,
Seems to the reveller deep beyond all time.
Therefore encumber not the sad young heart
With exhortations to impossible joy,
And charges of morose and thankless mood;
For there is working in that girl or boy
A power which will and must remain apart—
Only by love approached and understood.
| The Poetical Works of (Richard Monckton Milnes) Lord Houghton | |