University of Virginia Library


26

XXIV.

“Nam veluti Pueri trepidant atque omnia cæcis
In tenebris metuunt, sic nos in luce timemus.”
Lucret. iii. 87.

“As children fear the dark, and feign
All dreadful things therein;
Through life thus empty terrors vain
Still haunt the man within.
Yet not the sun's bright arrows keen
Can chase those fears away,
But in the soul the clear Serene
Of intellectual Day.”
“When I was a child . . . I thought as a child: but when I became a man I put away childish things.” 1 Cor. xiii. 11.

We must in wisdom be as men,
As children now no more,
Nor fear the ills of life again
As heathen men of yore.
How dread—by these mysterious fears
Let Heaven-taught childhood tell,
To be shut out from Him who bears
The keys of Death and Hell!