Of soul impetuous, and the bashful maid,

Smitten when all the promises of life

Are opening round her; those of middle age,

Cast down while confident in strength they stand,

Like pillars fixed more firmly, as might seem,

And more secure, by very weight of all

That for support rests on them; the decayed

And burthensome; and lastly that poor few

Whose light of reason is with age extinct;

The hopeful and the hopeless, first and last,