THE LONG LIFE AND THE FULL LIFE.
IMITATED FROM CLAUDIAN'S "OLD MAN OF VERONA."
In mine own hamlet, where, amidst the green,
By moss-grown pales white gleaming cots are seen,
There dwelt a peasant in his eightieth year,
Dear to my childhood—now to memory dear;
In the same hut in which his youth had pass'd
Dwelt his calm age, till earth received at last;
Where first his infant footsteps tottering ran,
Propp'd on his staff crawl'd forth the hoary man;
That quiet life no varying fates befell,
The patriarch sought no Laban's distant well;
Of Rothschild's wealth, of Wellesley's mighty name
To that seal'd ear no faintest murmur came.
His grand event was when the barn took fire,
His world the parish, and his king the squire.
Nor clock nor kalend kept account with time,
Suns told his days, his weeks the sabbath chime;
His spring the jasmine silvering round his door,
And reddening apples spoke of summer o'er.
To him the orb that set o'er yonder trees,
Tired like himself, lit no antipodes;
And the vast world of human fears and hopes
Closed to his sight where yon horizon slopes,—
That beech which now o'ershadows half the way,
He saw it planted in my grandsire's day;
Rooted alike where first they braved the weather,
He and the oaks he loved grew old together.
Not ten miles distant stands our County-hall—
To him remoter than to thee Bengal;
And the next shire appear'd to him to be
What seas that closed on Franklin seem to thee.
Thus tranquil on that happy ignorance bore
The green old age still hearty at fourscore;
To him, or me—with half the world explored,
And half his years—did life the more afford?
There the grey hairs, and here the furrow'd breast!
Ask, first—is life a journey or a rest?
If rest, old Man, long life indeed was thine;
But if a journey—oh, how short to mine!
THE MIND AND THE HEART.
"MA VIE C'EST UN COMBAT."
Why, ever wringing life from art
Do men my patient labour find?
I still the murmur of my heart,
My one consoler is my mind.
Though every toil but wakes the spell
To rouse the Falsehood and the Foe,
Can all the storms that chafe the well,
Disturb the silent Truth below?
The Mind can reign in Mind alone.—
O Pride, the hollow boast confess!
What slave would not reject a throne
If built amidst a wilderness?