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YOUTH AND AGE.

YOUTH AND AGE.

PERSE, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying,
Where Hope clung feeding like a bee-
Both were mine! Life went a-Maying
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,
When I was young!

When I was young! ah, woeful when!
Ah, for the change 'twixt now and then!
This breathing house not made with hands,
This body that does me grievous wrong,
O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands
How lightly then it flashed along!

Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,

On winding lakes and rivers wide;

That ask no aid of sail or oar,

That fear no spite of wind or tide!

Nought cared this body for wind or weather,
When Youth and I lived in't together!
Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like ;

Friendship is a sheltering tree;

Oh, the joys that came down shower-like,
Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,

Ere I was old!

Ere I was old? ah, mournful ere,
Which tells me, Youth's no longer here!
O Youth! for years so many and sweet,
'Tis known that thou and I were one-
I'll think it but a fond conceit;
It cannot be that thou art gone!

THE CHILD AND DOVE.

Thy vesper-bell hath not yet tolled;
And thou wert aye a masker bold—
What strange disguise hast now put on,
To make believe that thou art gone?
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this altered size;
But spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!
Life is but Thought! so think I will,
That Youth and I are house-mates still!

COLERIDGE.

THE CHILD AND DOVE.

HOU art a thing on our dreams to rise,
'Midst the echoes of long-lost melodies,
And to fling bright dew from the morning back,
Fair form, on each image of childhood's track!

Thou art a thing to recall the hours

When the love of our souls was on leaves and flowers;
When a world was our own in some dim, sweet grove,
And treasure untold in one captive dove!

Are they gone can we think it, while thou art there,
Thou radiant child with the clustering hair?

Is it not spring that indeed breathes free,

And fresh o'er each thought, as we gaze on thee?

No! never more may we smile, as thou

Sheddest round smiles from thy sunny brow!

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Yet something it is, in our hearts to shrine,
A memory of beauty, undimmed as thine!

To have met the joy of thy speaking face,

To have felt the spell of thy breezy grace;

To have lingered before thee, and turned, and borne
One vision away of the cloudless morn!

MRS. HEMANS.

ODE.

HERE was a time, when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore ;

Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the rose;

The moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare ;

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

ODE.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief;

A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong;

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;

Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity,

And with the heart of May

Doth every beast keep holiday ;

Thou child of joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
Shepherd-boy!

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call

Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee ;

My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal,

The fulness of your bliss I feel-I feel it all.

Oh, evil day! if I were sullen,
While earth herself is adorning,

This sweet May-morning,

And the children are culling

On every side,

In a thousand valleys far and wide,

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Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm :-
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!

—But there's a tree, of many one,

A single field which I have looked upon,

Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The soul that rises with us, our life's star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar;

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home;

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing boy.

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sees it in his joy ;

The youth, who daily further from the last
Must travel, still is nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

WORDSWORTH.