TO A MORALIST.

Are the sports of our youth so displeasing?

Is love but the folly you say?

Benumb'd with the Winter, and freezing,

You scold at the revels of May.

For you once a nymph had her charms,

And oh! when the waltz you were wreathing,

All Olympus embraced in your arms—

All its nectar in Julia's breathing.

If Jove at that moment had hurl'd

The earth in some other rotation,

Along with your Julia whirl'd,

You had felt not the shock of creation.

Learn this—that Philosophy beats

Sure time with the pulse—quick or slow

As the blood from the heyday retreats,—

But it cannot make gods of us—No!

It is well, icy Reason should thaw

In the warm blood of Mirth now and then,

The Gods for themselves have a law

Which they never intended for men.

The spirit is bound by the ties

Of its jailer, the Flesh—if I can

Not reach, as an angel, the skies,

Let me feel, on the earth, as a Man.

Oh, Monument of Shame to this our time,

Dishonouring record to thy Mother Clime!

Hail, Grave of Rousseau! Here thy sorrows cease.

Freedom and Peace from earth and earthly strife!

Vainly, sad seeker, didst thou search through life

To find—(found now)—the Freedom and the Peace.

When will the old wounds scar? In the dark age

Perish'd the wise. Light came; how fares the sage?

There's no abatement of the bigot's rage.

Still as the wise man bled, he bleeds again.

Sophists prepared for Socrates the bowl—

And Christians drove the steel through Rousseau's soul—

Rousseau who strove to render Christians—men.