IS IT ALL VANITY?
Doubting of life, my spirit paused perplext
Let fall its fardell of laborious care,
And the sharp cry of my great trouble vext
Unsympathizing air.
Out on this choice of unrewarded toil,
This upward path into the realm of snow!
Oh for one glimpse of the old happy soil
Fragrant with flowers below!
For what false gold, like alchemists, we yearn,
Wasting the wealth we never can recall,
Joy and life's lavish prime;—and our return?
Ashes, cold ashes, all!
Could youth but dream what narrow burial-urns
Hopes that went forth to conquer worlds should hold,
How in a tomb the lamp Experience burns
Amidst the dust of old!—
Look back, how all the beautiful Ideal,
Sporting in doubtful moonlight, one by one
Fade from the rising of the hard-eyed Real,
Like Fairies from the sun.
Love render'd saintlike by its pure devotion;
Knowledge exulting lone by shoreless seas
And Feelings tremulous to each emotion,
As May leaves to the breeze.
And, oh, that grand Ambition, poet-nurst,
When boyhood's heart swells up to the Sublime,
And on the gaze the towers of Glory first
Flash from the peaks of Time!
Are they then wiser who but nurse the growth
Of joys in life's most common element,
Creeping from hour to hour in that calm sloth
Which Egoists call "Content?"
Who freight for storms no hopeful argosy,
Who watch no beacon wane on hilltops grey,
Who bound their all, where from the human eye
The horizon fades away?