"I perceive that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own works, for that is his portion."—Eccles. iii. 22.
Sigh thou not for a happier lot,
Happier may never be;
That thou hast esteem the best,
And given by the gods to thee.
And if thy tender hopes be slain,
Fear not, they soon shall bloom again;
For the gloomiest hour
Is fair to the flower
That heeds neither wind nor rain.
Fear of change from old to strange
Follows the fullest joy;
Labour wears us more than years;
Calms, never broken, cloy.
Whatever load to thee be given,
Doubt not thy brethren too have striven;
Take what is thine
In the Earth's confine,
And hope to be blest in Heaven.
VI.
TO ——,
Led by swift thought, I scale the height,
And strive to sound the deep,
To find from whence I took my flight,
Or where I slept my sleep:
But the mists conceal that border-land
Whose hills they rest upon;
Again, with forward face, I stand,
For Gone is gone.
Sometimes I brood upon the years
I gave to self and sin;
Or call to mind how Doubts and Fears
Fled from a light within:
I might regret those errors past,
Might wish the light still shone,
Or check Life's tide that ebbs so fast;
But Gone is gone.
You, too, my loyal-hearted wife,
Saw many a weary day,
When, on your morning-sky of life,
The clouds of sorrow lay.
True friends departed—grief for them,
Joy for the False made known,
And over all this Requiem,
That Gone is gone.
The glare of many a spectral Truth
Might haunt me still unchanged,
The broken purpose of my Youth,
The loving hearts estranged.
But, turning to your love-lit eyes,
—The love-lit eyes shine on—
I thank my God with happy sighs
That Gone is gone.
VII.
Oft, in a night of April, when the ways
Are growing dark, and the hedge-hawthorns dank,
The glow-worm scatters self-adorning rays—
Earth-stars, that twinkle on the primrose bank.
And so, when Life around us gathers Night,
Too dark for Doubt, and ignorant of Sin,
The happy Heart of youth can shed a light
Earth-born, but bright, and feed it from within.