If thou must change, beauty shall form the groove,
And nourish promise in a firmer mould,
Which, all unchequered, onward still shall move,
Informed with wisdom and in virtue old:
Thus shalt thou live, but no, what years can add
To the keen edge of thy unbated mind?
Or what hath wisdom, more than reason had,
When in thy form she mustered all her kind?
Within the acorn lies the oak’s whole essence,
Man can accomplish but what in man dwells;
The iron that supples with its incalescence,
Yet wears the nature that its coldness tells;
So, yet unfashioned, in thy youth reposes
The germ that turns to use young nature’s roses.
IX.
’Tis thou hast taught me what of truth I know,
Kind debt, that binds me nearer unto thee,
That worth’s best triumph scorns all outward show
And works within its quiet mystery;
That the same virtues walk in various light,
Accomplishing by each their several ends,
That as the sun to day, the moon to night,
This, its pale lustre, that, its ardour lends;
So with each mortal’s differing merits twined,
A separate glory crowns peculiar aims,
And myriad fates, in one deep urn combined,
Stamp, with one issue, more than million claims;
Some only tower, above the rest, supreme,
That such thy lot, methinks, it well would seem.
X.
Rare lot where reason is with fate combined,
Where envy enters not, but only love;
Thought, expectation, fancy, intertwined,
All could not fashion, that which thou dost prove:
Where then is time for jealous jarring thought
To ruffle the full transport of our heaven,
Or clog the wings of adoration fraught
With purity and hope’s exulting leaven?
Sunk in the sense of that supremest pleasure,
Here let me lose myself to live in thee;
A priceless boon, I only know to measure,
By what it costs my soul again to flee:
From heaven I fall, and this must, sure, be hell,
Earth never looked so void, I know full well.
XI.
Spirit of youth and joy and hope and love,
All this thy essence is and dwells in thee,
This praise but mocks thee, whilst thou soar’st above
Such vague assaults, in nature’s witchery!
Thou art a pearl, snatched from the angry deep,
A star, which envy hurled from comrade suns,
An opal, where all rays reflected sleep,
The summer lightning, glistering as it runs;
All things that loveable and lovely are,
Such thou appearest, in thy joyous hour;
Oft frolicsome as leaves, that dance from far,
When the wind dallies with some pensive flower;
All these thou art yet all of these express
Nought of the magic of thy loveliness.