This guest abiding ever, not strange, nor a servant, but a son,—
Such, O man, are vanity and dreams, transient as a rainbow on the cloud,
Weighed against that solid fact, thine ill-remembered Yesterday.
Come, let me show thee an ensample, where Nature shall instruct us;
Luxuriantly the arguments for truth spring native in her gardens.
Seek we yonder woodman of the plain; he is measuring his axe to the elm,
And anon the sturdy strokes ring upon the wintry air:
Eagerly the village school-boys cluster on the tightened rope,
Shouting, and bending to the pull, or lifted from the ground elastic;
The huge tree boweth like Sisera, boweth to its foes with faintness,—