The echoes, from the ruins of the Past,
Steal o’er our ears, sphering a heavenly isle;
Haply deceptive, yet we’ll there make fast,
Wreathing the skeleton world in childhood’s smile:
For who can build, when woods and quarries fail?
Or who can fathom the dark monster deep?
How shall the bud be rear’d from storm and hail?
Which drug and stun the Present, till it sleep:
Yet sift the grains, dissevering hope from fear,
For one least seed shall shame whole worlds of drought;
Brightens the prospect, when beheld more near;
Love trims the flights, that scorn knows but to flout:
The search may fail, yet seeking bears its crown,
And joy’s least treasure smooths the world’s worst frown.
CXIX.
O Eden of our childhood, Innocence!
How did thy ardour paint the ugly world;
Making it amiable, void of all pretence;
With roses garlanded with dew be-pearl’d
The world’s not chang’d, ’tis only thou, art gone;
The music’s wanting to the quick-breathing shell;
The aroma fails where it hath dwelt so long;
The flash divine is dead, or fades to Hell;
But, thou wast gentle, calm, silent, and strong;
A truth, too real, to be here conceiv’d:
And we are parted,—be it not for long,
That thou art somewhere, may be well believed.
O let me find thee; if frail life forbid,
In the universe of thee, let life be hid.
CXX.
To see great minds baffling an evil fate,
Delights, and urges on to emulous deeds;
Yet, seems it only Nature’s tricksome state,
Defeating self, by livelier-quickening seeds;
The mind conquers base thoughts by its own power,
Then thinks it much, that its true self prevails;
Yet Nature tempers all things, even the flower
That stoops to winter, or that scorns his flails;
But, when young, godlike innocence arises,
He will not flinch, nor shudder, nor conspire;
His perfect purpose shatters faint surmises,
And brightly burns, ascending ever higher:
Conquered, at length, by his too great devotion,
He learns he lives in nought, and kills emotion.
CXXI.
There seem’d to burst upon my flooded sight
A globe of lustre, an enormous sun;
It swallow’d, in the majesty of its might,
The whole vast concave, where the eye can run:
I stood, I know not where, marking it glide
With stealthy swiftness on its axle, round;
And there were forms, frown’d lurid on its side,
Their names were on their brows, there was no sound:
The orb had blazon’d, Change, on each proud flank,
And pass’d its order’d puppets in review;
First, Death rose ghastly, then as sudden sank,
Conquered by Woe, of sullen haggard hue:
Despair and Hope, Love, Youth, Fear, Friendship, Hate,
Tears, Laughter, Beauty, Age grew link’d in fate.