21.
‘The blasts of Autumn drive the winged seeds
Over the earth,—next come the snows, and rain, _3650
And frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads
Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train;
Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again,
Shedding soft dews from her ethereal wings;
Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain, _3655
And music on the waves and woods she flings,
And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things.
22.
‘O Spring, of hope, and love, and youth, and gladness
Wind-winged emblem! brightest, best and fairest!
Whence comest thou, when, with dark Winter’s sadness _3660
The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest?
Sister of joy, thou art the child who wearest
Thy mother’s dying smile, tender and sweet;
Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest
Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet, _3665
Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding-sheet.
23.
‘Virtue, and Hope, and Love, like light and Heaven,
Surround the world.—We are their chosen slaves.
Has not the whirlwind of our spirit driven
Truth’s deathless germs to thought’s remotest caves? _3670
Lo, Winter comes!—the grief of many graves,
The frost of death, the tempest of the sword,
The flood of tyranny, whose sanguine waves
Stagnate like ice at Faith the enchanter’s word,
And bind all human hearts in its repose abhorred. _3675
24.
‘The seeds are sleeping in the soil: meanwhile
The Tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey,
Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile
Because they cannot speak; and, day by day,
The moon of wasting Science wanes away _3680
Among her stars, and in that darkness vast
The sons of earth to their foul idols pray,
And gray Priests triumph, and like blight or blast
A shade of selfish care o’er human looks is cast.
25.
‘This is the winter of the world;—and here _3685
We die, even as the winds of Autumn fade,
Expiring in the frore and foggy air.
Behold! Spring comes, though we must pass, who made
The promise of its birth,—even as the shade
Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings _3690
The future, a broad sunrise; thus arrayed
As with the plumes of overshadowing wings,
From its dark gulf of chains, Earth like an eagle springs.
26.
‘O dearest love! we shall be dead and cold
Before this morn may on the world arise; _3695
Wouldst thou the glory of its dawn behold?
Alas! gaze not on me, but turn thine eyes
On thine own heart—it is a paradise
Which everlasting Spring has made its own,
And while drear Winter fills the naked skies, _3700
Sweet streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh-blown,
Are there, and weave their sounds and odours into one.
27.
‘In their own hearts the earnest of the hope
Which made them great, the good will ever find;
And though some envious shade may interlope _3705
Between the effect and it, One comes behind,
Who aye the future to the past will bind—
Necessity, whose sightless strength for ever
Evil with evil, good with good must wind
In bands of union, which no power may sever: _3710
They must bring forth their kind, and be divided never!
28.
‘The good and mighty of departed ages
Are in their graves, the innocent and free,
Heroes, and Poets, and prevailing Sages,
Who leave the vesture of their majesty _3715
To adorn and clothe this naked world;—and we
Are like to them—such perish, but they leave
All hope, or love, or truth, or liberty,
Whose forms their mighty spirits could conceive,
To be a rule and law to ages that survive. _3720
29.
‘So be the turf heaped over our remains
Even in our happy youth, and that strange lot,
Whate’er it be, when in these mingling veins
The blood is still, be ours; let sense and thought
Pass from our being, or be numbered not _3725
Among the things that are; let those who come
Behind, for whom our steadfast will has bought
A calm inheritance, a glorious doom,
Insult with careless tread, our undivided tomb.
30.
‘Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love, _3730
Our happiness, and all that we have been,
Immortally must live, and burn and move,
When we shall be no more;—the world has seen
A type of peace; and—as some most serene
And lovely spot to a poor maniac’s eye, _3735
After long years, some sweet and moving scene
Of youthful hope, returning suddenly,
Quells his long madness—thus man shall remember thee.