University of Virginia Library

An aged man, leaning his tottering weight
Upon the shoulder of a fair haired youth,
Passed, with unsteady steps, along the path
Which threads the village church-yard, and upon
A tomb that rose conspicuous rested him;
By thoughts enrapt which inspiration drew
From the unnumbered graves that circled him.
But the boy stood up, and gazed with open eye
On the declining sun; while heaved his bosom
Like a troubled sea; and, ever and anon,
Half uttered thoughts broke forth, emotions fierce,
Which shook his very frame; and his grasped hand
Caught at the empty air, as if to snatch
A well tried falchion from its glittering sheath.

The old man, half astonished, on his son
Fixed his full gaze, and said, “What see'st thou, boy,
In the calm face of heaven, to call forth thoughts
So potent?”
But the stripling, all abashed,
His flushing features from his father turned;
Then looked again where the red setting sun
Gleamed on a pile of heavy, purple clouds,
Which, all day battling with the mountain peaks,
Had dashed their dusky fronts in wild array,
'Gainst the bald summits; now, as eve drew on,
Rested their weary squadrons half-way down
The opposing mountain, and sank to sleep
'Neath the triumphant light that lit its brow.
“Father,” said he, “though my eyes rested on
Yon bank of glorious clouds, I saw them not;
For I was wrapt in thoughts that, in despite
Of sober reason, haunt me like a curse.
Yet now thou ask'st, methinks they shape themselves
Into the forms of silent, threatening hosts,
Amid them waving pennons and standards proud;
And white walled tents and gay pavilions gleam,
Of cloth of gold, hung o'er with burnished arms
That flicker in the sun-light; while around
Dark legions frown as resting from a fray:
Far on the outskirts beam flashes of light,
Which to me seem like groves of moving spears,
Guarding within their glittering round secure
Their war-worn comrades. Now a transient ray,
Darting across, seems like a full armed knight
Spurring among the dusky throngs, arrayed
In all the gorgeous panoply of war.”
“Enough, enough!” broke in the old man's voice.
“Thus ever to the Future turns the eye
Of him who, standing on the shadowy verge
Of new-born life, would fain, from out the mist
That balks his anxious view, shape fancied forms
Congenial to his soul; people the earth
With things as false and fleeting as the shapes
Wrought by the sun on yonder pile of clouds.
But Age's eye dwells ever on the Past;
Rolls back its philosophic gaze, and scans
The varied path its eager vision roved
From youth to feeble eld; and sees alas!
How every tinselled idol, that its youth
Had longed to grasp, faded beneath the touch
Of stern, unwavering Truth. Thus Youth and Age
Dwell in far separated kingdoms. Youth
Gazes on phantoms, conjures from the brain
Shapes, pleasures, aims and longed-for happiness
Which have no real existence on this earth;
And over all its spreads a potent spell
Whose alchymy turns, Midas like, each thing
To purest gold, gilding the meanest mark
With a delusive glitter. But the Old
Gaze on a world of stern realities;
On acts whose trace is stamped with iron foot
On the external universe; whose forms
Oft in the middle watches of the night,
And in the twilight's shade, sacred to thought
And thronged memory, have come, like ghosts,
Laying their icy fingers on the heart,
Till they half stilled its beatings. Then we know
How high to prize the aimless aims of Youth;
When we have seen the hard won trophies sink,
'Fore our astonished eyes, to heaps of dust;
And own, like desert travellers, that the land
Glittering with streams and valleys of repose.
The fair land of the Future—was a scene
Of our distempered vision; or else shaped forth
By the sun's beams from some delusive mist,
Which melts as we approach it. Then we know
That as each coming day becomes the Present,
It with it brings dark hours of care, not gladness.
How vain the idle prophecies of Hope!
When but a single turn of that great wheel
O'er which our pilot Circumstance presides,
May urge the stalwart vessel of our life
From the direct, desired course, and dash
Her groaning bulk, high stranded, motionless,
The gnawing rocks among, a sight for Fate
To laugh at.
“Ah! thoughts like these comport not
With thy years, unapt for Age's wisdom.
But O this warning to thy memory take,
Avoid Ambition! 'Tis a dangerous fiend,
Arrayed in angel's garments, whose soft voice
Tempts his fond follower to destruction's gulph.
At best, a tissue of base, selfish pride;
A sun that shines not for the warmth it gives,
But that its brightness may be glorified.
All to itself, but nothing aught to it.
Thrust not thyself before thy fellow man,
And vaunt to be a leader; for the few
Who thus have led a palsied world, at length,
When power and gold, and all the wondrous charms
That in the vulgar eye upheld them, failed,
Have fallen unaided by the petted herd
Who basked beneath their smiles, unpitied by
The timid slaves who 'neath their sceptres cowered.
Yet judge not harshly of mankind for this,
It in the end gives justly; but Fame's crown
Can ill requite a life of cankering care;
Can ill requite the assassin's bloody stab;
Or a long eve of life, illy endured,
On a bleak sea-washed island.
“Ah! how few
With mortal strength reach immortality.
O! where is he who with his single arm
Rolled back the tide of battle? while his brow
Flushed with the hope of immortality,
As proudly 'tween the opposing hosts he stood,
The mark of every weapon. Now, perchance,
In a dim nook of some cathedral vast,
His cumbrous trophied monuments arise,
Scrawled o'er with sounding phrase, couched in a tongue
Unknown to half the world, unread by all.
Nay, Boy, rather in peaceful quiet rest,
In the world nameless, unless the voices
Of enslaved mankind call thee to succor
From the Tyrant's grasp, or baser bondage
Of blind Ignorance the feeble masses.
Thy work achieved, go, like the ancient Roman,
To thy plough; but of recompense dream not!

“How vain his life whose precious hours are spent
In deeds of selfish glory! Oft the path
Mistaken, oft the mark o'ertravelled quite;
So when the twilight hour of life draws on,
When the weak hand can scarcely lift the blade
Which swung a feather in the youthful grasp,
When the directing eye, the courage vast,
The bounding blood, the craft, the energy
That gave him power, fall withered, stricken down
Beneath the enervating touch of age—
How sad to hear ambition's votary whine!
To see him stretch his feeble hands, and seek
To grasp the phantom o'er the yawning grave!

“Yet, haply, some have died, buoyed by the hope
Of after honours, whose short living fame
Has perished ere their bodies. But known now
To some dry ponderer over antique lore,
Who, for a fleeting moment, raked aside
The dust of old oblivion, in a day
Again to close above them. Where are they,
The titled poets, the gay silken bards,
Whose warblings rapt the ear of Second Charles?
Who crossed their spotted fingers o'er the pall
Which decked their gilded, coroneted beds,
And slept, and dreamed of immortality.
O! Etherege, Dorset, Vanbrugh, Buckingham,
Licentious Rochester, weak Newcastle,
Sedley and soft-tongued Suckling, and the host
Whose songs want now an echo, could ye tread
The scenes of your endeavours, and there find
How small a noise your little glory makes,
Ye'd curse the bloated monarch whose soft touch
Deflowered your muse, and sent her wanton to you;
Changed all her lays, took her from wood and stream
To sing unwonted, artificial songs,
'Neath silken hangings, to polluted crowds
Of painted strumpets! Thus 'twill ever fare
With those who pander to the present time;
For the pure rill of song, whose onward course
Flows through the absorbing sands of Time, must burst,
Like that which leapt beneath the prophet's rod,
From out a heaven fed rock, and flow along
In no accustomed channel.
“Yet how few,
Whose deeds are worthy of immortal praise,
Gain their deserts! Some, for a season, wear
The olive wreath; but when the rolling years
Bring on a new Olympiad, from the brow
The withered leaflets fall, and a new wreath
Decks out a new competitor. Happy they—
Like the blind Chian, or the heaven rapt bard
Who sung of Eden, or the trumpet voiced
Who made sweet Avon murmur to his lay,
And flow immortal 'tween its rocky sides—
Whose glories heap the rolling car of Time
With each succeeding year. Thence challenge not
Eternal justice, because God has raised
So far above our humbler heads these few.
The gift is to mankind, not to the men
Who bear such precious favours; for when death
Nips the rich blossoms of their glorious lives,
The perfume and the healing balm remain
To comfort coming ages.
“Though to all
Heaven's wisdom grants not greatness, laud I not
Inaction; that dull slothfulness which numbs
Our finer natures, and draws on our heads
A curse worse than Circean; makes the heart,
And the profound mysterious abyss
Where lurks the awful soul, a shapeless chaos;
A stagnant, filthy, heavy pool, engendering
Corruption; striking at a single blow
The mortal and immortal. O! if sight
Known to our earthly vision every day—
Of Heaven bound pilgrims who throw down the staff,
And sit in idiot wonder by the road,
Seeking to cull the luring flowers which grow
Along the pathway—planted to delight,
Not form the total business of their lives—
While the sun that measures forth their journey
Whirls across the heavens, cleaving the ether
Towards his red western seat; when starless night
Comes stealing from its dimmest eastern verge,
Wrapping the frighted traveller in its shroud—
A night in which each darling of his heart
Shows like a horrid spectre—how gropes he,
How stretches forth his feeble, helpless hands,
And seeks the road, now vanished! What loud cries
Fill the damp, empty air, as onward stumbling,
He bewails the ill-spent hours of sun-light!
If sight like this, I say, e'er comes within
The ken of those bright ministers of man,
Who wandering from their starry watch-fires gaze,
With saddened faces, on this nether world,
How must they stretch their helping fingers forth,
E'en to the bar Omnipotence has placed
'Tween men and angels, as 'tween life and death,
And seek to urge the idle loiterers on!
What hasty blows reverberating beat
On echoing Conscience, that alarum of souls!
One may be saved in thousands, and for that
A strain of hallelujahs and soft sounds
Rise upward from the extremest edge of Heaven,
From all the outposts of the Angel band,
E'en to the throne Eternal; brings a smile
O'er that pale thorn crowned face which, for a time,
Gains a brief respite for this Sodom vast.
O! were it not for the bright band of Saints
Who, day by day, with tears and humble prayers
Keep off the Eternal's wrath and justice;
Who meekly bear ungrateful scoff and jeer,
As bore their master; who can truly tell
How many rounds the circling years would run,
Ere from the firmament this twinkling star
Would vanish like a taper!
“Who shall say
Who in the purer eye of Heaven is great?
Is he, who with his banded steel clad hordes
O'erturns whole empires? Is he, whose riches
O'er a starving land spread health and plenty;
Until each beggar, big with fat and praise,
Hiccoughs his glory? Or, whose ringing lyre
Winds round the hearts of listening spell bound men
The mystic chains of living harmony?
Is he, who, propped with hate and stubborn pride,
Falls martyr to some monstrous, soul-hugged error?
Or he, who 'gainst adversity, 'gainst scorn,
With tearful eyes forgiving all who hate,
Eyes in whose briny depths shine Faith's pure pearl,
Treads a rough way, with upturned visage meek,
Nor recks what path his awful Pilot leads?
Who shall decide? But this we know full well,
What men call life so small, so poor a part
Of real Existence is, 'tis scarce worth counting.
Measure this life by what must measure Man,
Eternity, dread word—in what a sea
The petty atom falls! Ay stretch the brain
Until the mental eye strains nigh to bursting!
How sick and faint the drooping thoughts come back!
Nor with them bring the most remote and dim
Memento or idea of that vast flood,
That limitless, that landless, shoreless sea,
In which frail Man, the intellectual ark,
Floats onward, ever, ever. Years to years
Add, till the mathematic hand grows tired,
And give them all to earth;—and what are these
To infinite eternity? Say thou,
Whose soul is parched with thirst for earthly fame,
What is life's greatness, life with all its pomp,
With all the grandeur that e'er marked the scene,
Compared with e'en the lowest, meanest fate
Eternity holds darkly?
“But I've strayed
Far from my path; haply my wanderings led
A step towards Heaven. Know that unceasing Action,
Zeal and Fortitude, led on by Justice,
Reason and unwavering Truth, can never
To mankind work evil. Though they should hurl
From off their venerable thrones great tyrants;
Uproot the time-bred errors men have built,
Like Titans, and shake the crumbling ruins
On their heads who have so long upheld them;
Setting the world to groping for a way
To govern safe its huge, unwieldy masses.
This earth so crowded is with bloated Wrongs,
Grown grey and peevish, their claims resting on
Remote antiquity and usage long,
That Truths can scarce find place to tread upon.
If thy heart tells thee thou art strong and pure,
And a low voice, which none but great men hear,
Whispers within the portals of thy soul—
“Go forth and help thy weakly battling race!”
Join in life's struggle therefore; but towards fame
Look not; for a divided purpose oft
Misses both fame and action. Give the act,
And not the selfish glory, thy full strength;
So may'st thou better do the deed. Should Fame
O'ertake thee, as she often comes to men
Whose thoughts are furthest from her, meekly bear
The honours she brings with her. Be not puffed
With vanity above thy just deserts,
And 'void the contest to live on thy name;
But fight, fight while one foe remains,
And die to live heareafter!
“Some there are
Whose strength suits not to bide the onset fierce
Of that athleta whose gaunt brawny form,
In nakedness olympic, smeared with oils,
Stands forth to brave the tug of the whole world,
Secure in conscious power, whom men call Error;
Lest his subtle skill in mockery eludes
The half ta'en grasp he jeering, suffers; or,
With the effrontery of hardy strength,
Lifts in mid air his adversary's form,
And hurls him earthward lifeless. They with pen,
Or more persuasive eloquence that dwells
In solemn numbers of the warbling lyre,
May shape the rugged thoughts and acts of men
To forms of living beauty; mould the mass
So its harmonious splendour shall outshine
God's dumb and soulless works. Thus ordered He
That man in mass, and individually should work
His own progression. While the light of Truth
Shines ever brightening into glorious day,
And Knowledge, maiden meek, steals on and peers,
With curious wonder, into spots before
To her unknown—who shall set limits to,
Who measure forth progression infinite,
Which age by age, goes on in Creatures formed
At first but less than Angels?
“These not thoughts
Which haunt the Poet only. O! if men
Would turn from these dear books whose columns long
Attest their hoarded treasures, for an hour—
A little hour well won from years of gain—
To ponder if this beauteous frame of ours,
With all its subtle senses, and that mind
Whose wonderous faculties perceptive grasp
A grain of Truth from out a sea of Error,
Were given to cast accounts, or overreach,
With cunningest device and well laid scheme,
Their fellow schemer? Or if wealth, at last,
Pours to your coffers in a solid stream,
Will you sit down in idle ease, and feed
The hundred mouths which sense perverted holds
Forever gaping? Has man no fear then?
Knows he not he hangs, in nicest balance,
Wavering 'tween Life and Death; that but a mote
May turn the hesitating beam forever?
Then comes the awful doom—bide it who can—
“Weighed, and found wanting!” Ah it gives a pang
That sets my brain to whirling; brings a fear
That makes my very marrow crawl, as if
Instinct with frozen life—such fear as one
With sharpened senses feels, when from the maze
Of some dread dream the sleeper wakes a coward—
Thus to see man's divinity forgot,
Though big with pride, he boasts the priceless treasure.
Yes, in a world were every atom speaks
Of changes momentary—where each shade
Of hill or tree, that glides along the ground,
Tells, like a dial, of the steady march
Unwearied Time pursues, man heaps up gold,
Frosts o'er the crispéd locks of youth with grey,
Digs furrows on the brow, and in the heart
Sinks, prematurely, wrinkles; and calls this,
This sad perversion of his nature, Wisdom.
Could all the tongues whose winning words have striven
Mankind to lead back to the paths of Truth;
Could all the lyres whose golden chords were strung
To lure with pleasant notes of sweet accord,
And mournful cadence, and indignant wrath,
And biting satire, and cold, trenchant truth,
Have turned to discord, wild as hell affords,
Suited to drive the erring Sinner mad;
Their devilish art could not have more prevailed,
No surer, broader, steeper road have made,
Sheer downward to perdition, than has Man,
Left to his own unbridled Will, shaped out,
E'en from those glorious powers, those wrecks of thought—
The last sad remnants of a purer state—
Now turned awry—which Heaven in mercy gave
To save, not damn him. Yet not in hatred
Turn, like a sickened misanthrope, aside
And leave him to his errors. He who feels
Within himself the strength and quickening power
Which Nature gives to Genius, owes to man—
By Heaven-wrought chains of Duty bound—great deeds.
Deeds which may tear his heart asunder; hold him
Bare to the hissing fools whose good he sought;
Draw on his head the laugh of the light crew,
Who deem they follow an abuséd creed—
Even by themselves misconstrued—which erst made
The full thronged Attic gardens eloquent—
Pursuit of Pleasure, not by virtue won,
And goodly deeds, as Epicurus taught;
But by pursuit of Pleasure sensual,
Which o'er its victim, like a vampire, broods,
And sucks his blood whose cheek it softly fans.
“The Genius, lifted far o'er common men,
Looks 'round in vain for sympathy that fills
Insatiably His bosom's appetite;
And finds to Him His fellow man appears
As some poor creature of another race—
His common wisdom utter ignorance—
His finest feelings gross as selfishness—
His loftiest aims no higher than the scope
Of his dim vision—his sapient judgment
Fond fatuity—that all his thoughts, aims,
Words and acts direct to naught and emptiness—
He feels upon a lofty hill He treads,
High up and lifted 'bove the vulgar throng,
Breathing a rarer, finer, purer air
Than they whose lives in humble vales are passed;
That scenes, to them unknown, dwell 'neath His eyes;
That first He sees the morning sun come forth,
Unclouded views its middle course, and last—
When darkness wraps the nether world—its setting;
But lone, lone as that mateless Arab bird
Which burns and dies 'mid spices! Man's small joys
Fill not a corner of His mighty heart.
Man's aims are feathers in His powerful grasp;
His own are bounded by infinity;
God's arm the only bar to His aspirings:
As 'mong the Angel throng, though clothed in flesh,
He stands upright, an equal. But from earth
Though He may gain the common sympathy
Which man holds out to man, within his breast
Are passions, thoughts and hopes unknown, undreamed
By ordinary mortals. Feelings which burst
Across the mind like whirlwinds, seize the soul,
And almost shake the intellectual man
To chaos—Ideas vague and dimly seen,
Which stand well nigh beyond the bourne of thought,
Towards which the aching brain struggles in vain.
Or looks on heights where Angels never pry,
Or into depths that devils shudder at;
Or grasps the Universe in one grand scheme;
Or on God's glory, with unshrinking eye,
Gazes and ponders. Or, admiring, scans
Our every day occurrences and sights,
Which on His mind burst with new power and meaning;
Those daily Miracles which use alone
Makes valueless and common. Earth to Him
Seems as at first to Adam, wonder lost,
Appeared creation. Or takes Fancy's wings,
And flies beyond the utmost bound of Sense,
To that Arcadia where the Poet dwells
In lands of loveliness, more gorgeous far
Than those which grew beneath the pencil touch
Of dreaming Claude. Then sick and saddened turns,
That feeble language can so ill convey,
Can only hide and veil the burning thoughts,
Which through it shine with half their splendor lost.
What wonder, if debarred all sympathy,
The life of Genius brings not happiness!
What wonder, if the mighty fire within
So soon consumes its feeble dwelling place!
Or frozen by despair and chill neglect,
The liquid fine, that nourishes his life,
Bursts the frail vase which holds it!
“Yet such man,
Of light transcendent, illy acts who lends
His fellow man no ray of his pure brightness.
E'en though with sneers the ingrate takes the gift,
Despair not; and this hint from Nature take—
Earth's smallest seedling by the wayside dropped
May, days hereafter, when the genial times
Of fruitfulness come on, flourish and bear;
Though for a season ripening 'neath the mould
That nourished, not destroyed it; when full grown,
Another race may seek its fruitful shade,
And glorify the Sower.
“The day must come
When Truth, now nursing in the arms of Time,
Shall burst its bondage, and come boldly forth,
As came Achilles to the walls of Troy,
In arms invulnerable, to sweep away
The host of veteran Errors, which so long
Have held the citadels of Thought in awe
By force of linkéd customs. Therefore ye
Who hear the solemn hum and trampling feet
Of thronging numbers crowding through the brain,
Whose hearts are rent as with an inward fire,
That racks the sense with joyous pain, burst forth!
Pour your wild music on the listening air!
Rise like the lark to Heaven! to earth but bound
By one small thread of finest melody.
Yet still remember in your highest flights,
Though clouds of splendor veil the distant world
That 'mid its fields your homely nest is placed,
And on its bosom, when the eve draws on,
A spot is found to rest your daring wings,
With strengthening food, a home secure from harm:
For so the eagle rests his weary wing,
Nor can he soar forever. And thus man,
Like great Antæus, gains his chiefest strength
From his life-giving mother, gentle earth.

“But woe to you who love the gilded cage,
Who pander basely to the present hour,
Who build not on that firm foundation, Truth!
Your artificial lays shall scarce outlive
The fleeting falsehoods that once gave them birth.
O that some mark of infamy, like Cain's,
Might fix eternal impress on their brows,
And send them shunned and naked through the world,
The jest of fools, and sorrow of the wise!
Who seek, with untaught power of mighty verse,
To lure their weaker brothers far astray;
Or praise their blinded errings. Each one knows,
Within his heart, himself a hypocrite;
Sees the sad tears the ravished muses shed
O'er their undoing; hears a potent voice
Thunder within his hollow soul—“Thou Traitor!
Unto whom much is given, much is required.”
How back in horror draws the shuddering mind
When pondering the fate of erring genius!
What doom for it? What nether deeps of hell,
Beyond the ken of foulest fiends, its home?
When disembodied conscience, robbed of sense
And all the earthly guile that blunts remorse,
Sees pitiless the stern, frozen eye of Truth
Glare through the blackest night, concentered on
The trembling soul's misdeeds? What can console—
What earthly balm allay the torture? Fame?
No! for what one in pride of power sets up,
And risks immortal name and honour on,
A thousand envious hands to overturn
Unceasing toil. Naught that is false can stand.
True greatness builds upon the roots of things,
Builds on the fundamental, homely truths
Of human Reason. Lifts its proud form aloft
Like the sand-girded pyramid; and rests
Upon foundations whose tremendous size
Make the huge superstructure, howe'er vast,
Howe'er adorned with architectural strength,
Seem light and airy. There grey, wondering Time,
Wrapt up in admiration of a thing
Which measures his duration, turns aside
His noiseless chariot's destructive wheels,
O'ercome with awe and reverence. Have not they,
Whose voices peal among the echoing years,
Founded their songs, however grand, upon
Those simple, natural Truths which, touched, come home
To every bosom? Things which were the same
Ten hundred years ago as now; whose source
Is in man's nature; the same to me as
To the dwarfish, frozen Esquimaux who roams
Beneath the chilly Arctic; which would rouse
With the same fire and energy the hearts
Once beating 'neath the spice-balmed Thebans' breasts,
And the vast crowd which full of life rolls on
Beneath my window. Sing of these, ye Bards!
Ye earthly seraphs! Prophets of these days!
The lowest of you far as Heaven from Earth
Above the common, powerless herd of men—
Not that contemptuous I would seek to sink
My fellow mortal 'neath the Heaven rapt Bard;
Nay! rather raise him to the glowing sphere
Whence draws the Poet his inspiring might—
Sing of all Truth! and if no fame is given,
Yet feel, like nature, you have shed your gifts
Of flowers and fruits, to deck our mother earth,
On a far distant, undiscovered land,
Where no one gathers of the bounteous store.
Haply, when seas of doubt and fear perplex
Some storm tossed voyager, far away he'll see
The smiling, fruitful land, where harboured safe,
He'll grateful spread the country's rich renown.”

“See,” said the youth impatient, “Father see
What pyramids of flame the sun declining
Shoots aloft, e'en to the zenith! And now,
What showers of red and purple light the clouds
Shake from their golden skirts upon the heads
Of yonder towering hills! which seem to lift
Their glowing crests in regal pomp aloft,
Swelling beneath their fiery diadems.”

“Thus gleams each object to the eyes of youth,”
Broke in the sage, “thus takes each thing he sees
To be no other than it seems. To me,
Yon bank of clouds, and the red setting sun,
Tell of a broken storm whose rain has beat,
In pattering volleys, on some naked head;
Ere long, again to form and beat on others;
Or of a long and sweltering day dragged out
In toil beneath the torrid sun, which hot
Shot down direct and penetrating beams
On all who wandered 'neath it. Such a day
Was this, and such a one may be the morrow.

“The Wise, my Son, trust never to mere shows.
But ah! how slow is Youth those truths to learn,
To older men, by stern Experience taught.
O! that but few might suffer for the mass!
Yet none believe, while sailing down life's stream,
That all the ghastly hulks which line the shores,
Were wrecked on some deep sunken shoal which lies
Hid 'neath the smiling current. None believe
That things so fair, in outward seeming, bear
Within the seeds of death. Each must essay,
Each tempt the peril, spite of warning given.
What Man—howe'er endowed with Reason's power—
By mere unaided force of mind, could tell
What the effect, if to a sulphurous mass
Of black and sluggish powder be applied
The smallest point of fire, till in the air
With clamorous and deafening shock, bursts forth
The sleeping thunder? In the moral World
Are magazines of ill as fully stored,
As dread, as instant in their dire effects,
As full of peril to incautious Youth;
Which, touched, leave but a shattered wreck behind.
Yet with these slumbering dangers venturous man
Will toy and dally, like a wanton girl;
Lift the frail fabric of his pleasures on
The very mine which, in a moment, may
Hurl him and his bright hopes aloft in air,
A blackened, shapeless ruin.
“Experience,
Thou sad and hard won monitor, who stand'st,
When unavailing are thy threatening looks,
Close by the side of Age! can'st thou not teach,
By some direct and shorter course, the lore
Thou whisper'st to inert and feeble men,
Who need no caution; whose next tottering step
Closes forever their long run career,
In that mysterious womb of Heaven, the grave?
Can'st thou not teach by potent dream or vision,
Or by intuitive perception, or,
Making Age eloquent, by lessons grave
Which time worn men may tell to listening Youths?
Who may, so guided, early learn to shun
The crowded dangers that beset their path:
So, like Ulysses, with their hearing stopped
By thy sage counsels, they may safely glide,
Intact and harmless, past the Syren sounds
Which every pleasure sings to lure astray.
Not that I'd plant the callous heart of Age
In youthful breasts—No! but when man comes forth,
To fight the fight of Life, he cannot have
Too much of wisdom. What could not be done
By youthful Vigor to Experience linked;
By the same Courage which, when misdirect,
Hurries it, heedless, into danger's throat!

“Yet man ne'er learned, nor ever will I fear,
By other than his own experience sad.
I remember well that once your Grandsire,
On an eve like this, if I mistake not,
On this very spot, with thoughtful discourse
Warned me—filled like you, with gleaming visions,
And the checkered aims, all unconnected,
Which belong to Youth—of pending dangers
Round me; of guileful snares set from without,
And still more guileful thoughts invading me.
And bade me watch, but most to watch myself.
Yet one by one within the snares I fell;
And one by one the guilty thoughts o'ercame me.
Till starless in the sea of Life, without
Compass or chart, my destined course forgot,
Scarce one of all my darling hopes attained,
At last myself I found, weary and worn,
Battered and useless, and but asking rest,
Cast on an unknown shore, the coast of Death.

“Various as are the motives which men urge
To actions high, or deeds of low deceit,
Or pleasures, which the idle idly seek;
There is but one, in all the varied round,
Worthy his dauntless courage and his skill;
Or manly pleasure fitted to afford,
That fills the intellectual nature up
With ever changing pastimes of delight;
Pursuit of Truth, I mean, tempered by Love
To God and Man. This is a chase which, kept,
Shows the game ever in the Hunter's view,
While he, with brightened eye and flushing cheek,
And veins dilated with the blood of health,
Follows his nimble prey. The game ne'er gained
Till at the close of life, beside a bed
Placid and balmy as this summer's eve,
Some pious hand with kindly reverence lifts
The toil-bought trophies of the glorious chase;
But grasped in death; yet surely borne away
To do him honour in another land.
This the aim which spite of peril or neglect,
Or Hatred, swelling with its envious birth,
Or Fear, that shakes her aery dagger high,
Or wanton Pleasure, rich in naked charms
And luring baits to tempt the gloating eye,
The Youth, adventurous, bears safe through Life's strife,
In arms celestial clad, whose front of Truth
Drives Envy back innoxious. Or with blade
Of heavenly temper, like thunder-bolt,
Cleaves irresistibly the coward rout
Who shun to meet the terror-bearing steel.
E'en brazen Falsehood slinks away aghast,
And dreads to brave the lofty, beaming crest;
Slinks from the world, trembling in caverns dark,
Or hid in nooks obscene where light ne'er comes;
There sobbing cowers her votaries among;
And seeks to shift her guilty robe and badge
From off her shoulders, to impose it on
Some ductile victim; for the wary shun,
With soft apology and glozing words,
The certain death which 'neath that garment lurks.

“Fitly did they, who knighthood laid upon
The budding flowers and glory of their land,
Prescribe long days of purity and fast,
With thoughts removed from earthly care and guilt,
Arrayed in spotless robes; and last, alone,
With God to watch the slow-paced midnight through.
Such, only such can bear the blazon bright
Which Truth inscribes upon her Champion's shield;
For evil means would damn the fairest deed
That Saint or Angel, ever pure, performed:
And no man yet with honest ends in view,
Which he in face of God dare say are pure,
By crooked ways wrought out the purposed good;
For he in the achievement does more ill,
Than good achieved can balance, or blot out.
One drop of poison mars the sweetest draught;
One wrong, to meanest mortal done, will smirch
Intents as pure as morn's white, spotless front.
While all the twisted paths to Fame and Power,
Which timid man, ingenious, slyly winds
Round obstacles by coward Fancy shaped,
Might reach their ends by the more easy course
Which bold, straight forward Honesty pursues.
It needs but Courage and unshaken will,
And Energy which never flags or fails,
With frank and open heart, above all guile,
To gain respect from men, and win whate'er
High Heaven allows to weaker man below.

“The sun has set; and now the weeping earth,
In sable garments, mourns her buried lord;
Yet nature's grief a consolation gains;
For see, the mild faced moon is stealing on,
Threading her way among the bright browed stars;
And, as her silver finger touches earth,
She seems the memory of departed day.
'Tis thus to me a moonlit night e'er seems,
A faint idea, a dim remembrance vague
Of day's departed splendor. Like the thoughts
Which rise unbidden in the grateful heart,
And ope the gates of meditative tears,
When memories of departed friends rise up,
Whose kindly radiance for a season lit
The else dark world that in the bosom rolls.
But earth shall see another morn! Shall I
Be deemed presumptuous, if I hence infer
Another morn may greet the human soul;
Another joy be given to heavenly joys,
When spirits pure strain in their close embrace
The friends whose presence robbed this world of woe?
Else where the harmony in Heaven, unless
All Spirits blend to form an equal whole,
Knit and conjoined by bands of purest love?—
For e'en on earth love, pure above compare,
Makes us akin to Angels. Then shall not
Those spirits mingle closest which on earth
Found out and joined the heavenly harmony?
Or must we deem our earthly natures changed,
E'en in their better parts—that holy Love,
Those sweet Affections, which smooth roughest hearts,
Those high Aspirings after Truth and Good,
Those very acts which win a seat in Heaven,
In Heaven no longer please the changeless God;
That man a pure Intelligence becomes,
Of feeling void, a glorious, blazing sun
That lights, but warms not? Then must change entire
Pass o'er our being, first created in
The likeness of our Maker; man become,
E'en in that loftier state, less like his God,
And therefore fallen. For none believe, I ween,
That the eternal likeness can exist
In aught than moral semblance. None believe
That God is aught than space-pervading Power,
Incorporeal, devoid of earthly form,
Composed of mental qualities which dwell—
Though in a dimmed, less powerful state—in man;
Of Justice, Mercy, Constancy and Truth,
With all pervading Sympathy and Love
For each thing, mortal or immortal, living;
Joined to deific, perfect Power; towards which
Man with creative Genius ever strives.
Here ends the semblance vague; above rise heights
To which Archangels never hope to climb—
Omnipotence, Omniscience, Omnipresence,
Powers God reserves but for Himself alone.
Nor need is that the disembodied Soul
In sentient tissues should enwrap itself,
To own those quick Perceptions which, on earth,
Urge and direct the body's feeble mould.
These Qualities belong, by right supreme,
To Godlike Spirit, in its essence dwell,
And with its flight depart the grosser clay,
Leaving no relique in the body's grasp—
The flesh shrinks not at pain; and the dimmed eye
Weeps not with pity, or averts its gaze
From the sun's fiercest glare; the ear hears not,
Nor starts the warrior at the trumpet's call;
The balmy air shakes down the gifts of flowers,
The perfume passes by as o'er a waste,
Nor stirs the fixed and rigid face with smiles.
O whither, where are gone those Faculties
Which made proud man the wonder of the world,
The wonder chief, where all is marvellous?
Died they with yon base clod? How shrinks the mind
At the bare thought! No! high in Heaven, among
The greeting Cherubim, with worship filled,
With gratitude, and love, and virtue human,
Man stands confessed, though clad in Spirits' fire,
Undimmed by earth, untainted by gross sense,
In all his pristine majesty, man still:
Though Angel, differing far in quality
From those primeval ministers who rose
Ere man's creation—equal, yet distinct.
“These call not Poet's fancies, idly woke
While musing o'er a sunset—Know we not,
Earth, formed for man, upon its bosom bears
The characters of God, the symbols, types
Of our existence; which to Wisdom's eye
Are not sealed books! Each flower and budding tree
Stands forth a Prophet, mute, but never changing;
And mighty seas and torrents I have heard
Shout Revelations irresistible;
That, like a miracle, conviction forced,
And left the doubting mind no hiding-place.
Ever to me the mountain nurtured brooks,
And the blue hills, and spreading woodlands wide,
The coursing clouds, each sound that Nature makes,
Ay! and the little flowers, and trembling grass
Which 'neath my footsteps writhes, a spirit breathe
That lights or melts my heart with smiles and tears
Alternate. Not to all is such converse;
And Heaven I thank thee for the kindly boon!
For rather would I suffer misery's sting,
And feel I suffer, than not feel at all.

“Now night is on; and yon pale satellite
Weary with watching, sick at what she sees,
Care-worn with lighting in its orbit proud
This evil world, that o'er her reigns supreme,
Hides in the evening mist her pallid head,
And 'neath the clouds glides on her western way.
The eve wears fast; we must depart my Son.
But when, years hence, your life is well nigh run,
And all your aims are either gained or lost,
When shadows lengthen on your evening path,
And life's dim star is almost set in death;
If to this spot you come, on eve like this,
To cast about where you may lay your bones,
And, haply, on my grass-grown tomb you light,
Think of what here I taught thee. Then confess—
Though now, perchance, you heed it not at all,
And hug your darlings closer to your breast;
Nurslings that will destroy you, grown to strength,
Like Pelias' daughters, though with good intent—
That all the dry but truthful words I said
Were founded on experience and deep thought;
Though on your mounting hopes they fell like frost
On heads of young and freshly budding flowers.
Confess that you have gathered by the way,
With painful shocks which almost set you mad,
The self-same lesson. That the aims of man,
Though seeming grand, are tainted with the sin
By which fell Adam: so, by sin, have strayed
Far from the paths of Rectitude and Truth.
That the Ambition which makes self its end,
As great a sin towards mortal man becomes,
As the design by which proud Satan fell,
And, therefore, worthy kindred punishment.
That Fame's loud clarion is an empty noise,
A moment ringing, then silent fore'er.
That love to God and man, pursuit of Truth,
Which tends to lift our moral being up,
Joined to those kindly sympathies, which spread
Content and peace around us, are the bounds
Should fence man's highest, boldest efforts in.”

The old man ceased, as the low, wooden gate
Swung on their parting footsteps. And the Boy
Went forth, and fought, and died ere manhood's prime:
The Old man buried him, with sighs and tears,
With many a grievous shaking of the head;—
And 'neath this stone he lies, unknown and nameless.