XV.
Youth is the torch that lights up beauty’s forms,
The sail that wafts us where our hopes repose,
Now steals it towards the heart which now it storms,
And gradual towards its own ideal grows;
It sifts the sands, and clasps the golden grains;
It weaves a rainbow through the mists of life;
Sluggard desire that faints, even as it strains,
And wears fulfilment, as a tedious wife,
Feels but the touch of youth, and rapturous soars
To other heights, imagining brighter views;
Youth is a woodland slope, whose mossy pores
Are bursting with the life of violet hues;
Melodious changes of a harp’s reply
To its sweet theme of mutability.
XVI.
Art thou not goddess of this world, O Change?
Expound the riddle, otherwise who may,
Yet can I never from thy altar range,
Nature, artificer in a various way!
Enough for me if I may still adore
Each touch that throbs from thy maternal breast;
If I may linger by the lonely shore,
And find a universe of Elysian rest.
If that with hands reverent and pure and holy
I drag some relics from the unworthy shade,
Thou wilt assist, and fashion visions wholly
After the pattern which thyself hast made!
How more than mortal poor mankind should be,
If taught to crown the yearnings found in thee.
XVII.
There is a virtue loftier than the rules
By which belief squares what it would digest,
There is a process which the subtler schools
Believe too simple for their high bequest;
A goddess hovers o’er this giddy earth,
Her snowy breasts are budding to the air,
Her sad smile ’s conquered peace yet shrinks from mirth,
Reclines she, and her arms invite, her hair,
Sole garment of her loveliness, conformed
To the semblance of a golden lap, the shrine
And cradle of all promise; here are formed
All creeds of holiness, beauty, divine
Truth, and immortal strivings unfulfilled,
And through the whole rich charity’s distilled.