XXXII.
ON DISSIPATED YOUTH.
O Time, to whom the sands a temple raise
To sink as fast as they build up the spire,
The matin and the vesper tell thy praise,
Thou who dost bless all rational desire.
The wise adore thy chimes, the quarter's din,
A melody that to the conscience pleads;
That moves an echo in the ears of sin,
And warns it of the gulf to which it leads.
Earth goes on slowly through the sacred way;
With steps exact it gains the purposed end:
Man stakes eternity to win a day,
Soon to a heavier weight than life to bend.
The young are hastened from their brightest days
To scenes beyond their puny powers to scan,
And led to revel in dead pleasure's ways
That ill befit the riper years of man.
Too soon pale youth plays less than childhood's part:
He scarce can to the bed of sickness creep,
Thence early doomed to take his final start
And poise no more his blooming limbs in sleep.
The heir-presumptive to eternal grace
Has not an hour of mercy at his claim,
Too late a single mortgage to efface.
Yet tell not youth that death is taking aim!
The dying look, a spectacle sublime,
Is still on health restored and pleasure bent.
Shall he not live and mourn thy loss, O Time?
The sands descend, the vail in twain is rent.
EPODE.
Why not in simple terms describe the school
Where tutors strive to stultify the fool,
To train the germs of self-conceit in grace,
To polish up the faults but none efface;
To foster mockery in place of wit;
To teach false judgment on the world to sit?
Take him to court, give him his golden lace,
His noble birth in all his follies trace;
Take him to church the common prayer to say
And with a lisp the nearest beauty slay;
Then the last supper let him undergo,
Since it is meet to do as others do:
Thence into orgies he shall fondly glide,
And through the sot attain the suicide.
