Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
O! the joys, that came down shower-like. [20]
Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,
Ere I was old!

Ere I was old? Ah woful Ere,
Which tells me, Youth's no longer here!
O Youth! for years so many and sweet, [25]
'Tis known, that Thou and I were one,
I'll think it but a fond conceit—
It cannot be that Thou art gone!
Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd:—
And thou wert aye a masker bold! [30]
What strange disguise hast now put on,
To make believe, that thou art gone?
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this altered size:
But Spring-tide blossoms on thy lips. 35
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!
Life is but thought: so think I will
That Youth and I are house-mates still.

Dew-drops are the gems of morning,
But the tears of mournful eve! [40]
Where no hope is, life's a warning
That only serves to make us grieve,
When we are old:

That only serves to make us grieve
With oft and tedious taking-leave, [45]
[[441]]Like some poor nigh-related guest,
That may not rudely be dismist;
Yet hath outstay'd his welcome while,
And tells the jest without the smile.

1823-1832.

FOOTNOTES:

[439:1] First published in its present shape in 1834. Lines 1-38, with the heading 'Youth and Age', were first published in the Literary Souvenir, 1828, and also in the Bijou, 1828: included in 1828, 1829. Lines 39-49 were first published in Blackwood's Magazine for June 1832, entitled 'An Old Man's Sigh: a Sonnet', as 'an out-slough or hypertrophic stanza of a certain poem called "Youth and Age".' Of lines 1-43 three MSS. are extant. (1) A fair copy (MS. 1) presented to Derwent Coleridge, and now in the Editor's possession. In MS. 1 the poem is divided into three stanzas: (i) lines 1-17; (ii) lines 18-38; (iii) lines 39-43. The watermark of this MS. on a quarto sheet of Bath Post letter-paper is 1822. (2) A rough draft, in a notebook dated Sept. 10, 1823; and (3) a corrected draft of forty-three lines (vide for MSS. 2, 3 [Appendices] of this edition). A MS. version of An Old Man's Sigh, dated 'Grove, Highgate, April 1832', was contributed to Miss Rotha Quillinan's Album; and another version numbering only eight lines was inscribed in an album in 1828 when Coleridge was on his Rhine tour with Wordsworth. After line 42 this version continues:—

As we creep feebly down life's slope,
Yet courteous dame, accept this truth,
Hope leaves us not, but we leave hope,
And quench the inward light of youth.

T. Colley Grattan's Beaten Paths, 1862, ii. 139.