CXLII.THE FUTURE.
TO MY BROTHER EDWARD.
I
I have wishes, I have dreams,
And some vagrant hope which seems
Like a most uncertain star,
Still a joy, a joy from far:
Yet the Future is to me
Bright and barren as the sea,
Bare of sorrow, bare of glee.
When the present hour is weary
Old times are my sanctuary.
II
In my heart are many springs,
All with cheerful murmurings;
But their sweetness lures my mind
Oft its armor to unbind:
Then the Past my succor is,
A restraint on present bliss,
And an impulse when remiss,
A calm precinct, a grave rule,
Where I am all day at school.
III
I have such a power of love,
And such crowds of objects move
My affections every day,
That the present glides away:
And I have too quick an eye
Heavenly gestures to descry,
Till in mute repose they lie,
With time's shadow on them cast,
In the bosom of the Past.
IV
There must surely be a cause
Why, reversing common laws,
Heaven by no foreboding sorrow
Drives my thoughts upon the morrow,
And that simple childish hours
Should be still the only bowers,
Where repentance gathers flowers,
Whose strong scent of purer years
Kindles awe and wakens tears.
V
I have striven in restless hours
To invade the future's bowers,
And with fancy's help to riot
In the exquisite unquiet
Of a self-disturbance, where
All is shadowy as air;
But it left my spirit bare,
And some fault was sure to come
To my wild heart as a home.
VI
Farewell, Future! thou must be
Still a pathless tract to me,
A bar which I may overleap
Only in the spells of sleep.
Heaven be praised! thou canst not tease
Me from my contented ease,
Nor taint me with the weak disease
Of neglecting in my youth
Simple thought and sober truth.
VII
I shall reach thee at the last
When commuted to the Past,
And my pleasure will be double
For the self-restraint and trouble
Of averting thus my eyes
From thy pomps and mysteries,
While I watch the Present rise
From one conquest to another,
Virtue still being virtue's brother.
VIII
Yet I doubt not thou art giving
Light in which I now am living,
As the moon, although unseen,
Somehow scatters stealthy sheen.
In the Past I often see
Things which cannot rightly be
The Past's, but must belong to thee,
Wandering Future! strangely cast
Deep into the prescient Past.
