WE, O Nature, depart: | |
| Thou survivest us: this, | |
| This, I know, is the law. | |
| Yes, but more than this, | |
| Thou who seest us die | 5 |
| Seest us change while we live; | |
| Seest our dreams one by one, | |
| Seest our errors depart: | |
| Watchest us, Nature, throughout, | |
| Mild and inscrutably calm. | 10 |
| |
| Well for us that we change! | |
| Well for us that the Power | |
| Which in our morning prime | |
| Saw the mistakes of our youth, | |
| Sweet, and forgiving, and good, | 15 |
| Sees the contrition of age! | |
| Behold, O Nature, this pair! | |
| See them to-night where they stand, | |
| Not with the halo of youth | |
| Crowning their brows with its light, | 20 |
| Not with the sunshine of hope, | |
| Not with the rapture of spring, | |
| Which they had of old, when they stood | |
| Years ago at my side | |
| In this self-same garden, and said;— | 25 |
| ‘We are young, and the world is ours, | |
| For man is the king of the world. | |
| Fools that these mystics are | |
| Who prate of Nature! but she | |
| Has neither beauty, nor warmth, | 30 |
| Nor life, nor emotion, nor power. | |
| But Man has a thousand gifts, | |
| And the generous dreamer invests | |
| The senseless world with them all. | |
| Nature is nothing! her charm | 35 |
| Lives in our eyes which can paint, | |
| Lives in our hearts which can feel!’ | |
| |
| Thou, O Nature, wert mute, | |
| Mute as of old: days flew, | |
| Days and years; and Time | 40 |
| With the ceaseless stroke of his wings | |
| Brush’d off the bloom from their soul. | |
| Clouded and dim grew their eye; | |
| Languid their heart; for Youth | |
| Quicken’d its pulses no more. | 45 |
| Slowly within the walls | |
| Of an ever-narrowing world | |
| They droop’d, they grew blind, they grew old. | |
| Thee and their Youth in thee, | |
| Nature, they saw no more. | 50 |
| |
| Murmur of living! 1 | |
| Stir of existence! | |
| Soul of the world! | |
| Make, oh make yourselves felt | |
| To the dying spirit of Youth. | 55 |
| Come, like the breath of the spring. | |
| Leave not a human soul | |
| To grow old in darkness and pain. | |
| Only the living can feel you: | |
| But leave us not while we live. | 60 |
| |
| Here they stand to-night— | |
| Here, where this grey balustrade | |
| Crowns the still valley: behind | |
| Is the castled house with its woods | |
| Which shelter’d their childhood, the sun | 65 |
| On its ivied windows: a scent | |
| From the grey-wall’d gardens, a breath | |
| Of the fragrant stock and the pink, | |
| Perfumes the evening air. | |
| Their children play on the lawns. | 70 |
| They stand and listen: they hear | |
| The children’s shouts, and, at times, | |
| Faintly, the bark of a dog | |
| From a distant farm in the hills:— | |
| Nothing besides: in front | 75 |
| The wide, wide valley outspreads | |
| To the dim horizon, repos’d | |
| In the twilight, and bath’d in dew, | |
| Corn-field and hamlet and copse | |
| Darkening fast; but a light, | 80 |
| Far off, a glory of day, | |
| Still plays on the city spires: | |
| And there in the dusk by the walls, | |
| With the grey mist marking its course | |
| Through the silent flowery land, | 85 |
| On, to the plains, to the sea, | |
| Floats the Imperial Stream. | |
| |
| Well I know what they feel. | |
| They gaze, and the evening wind | |
| Plays on their faces: they gaze; | 90 |
| Airs from the Eden of Youth | |
| Awake and stir in their soul: | |
| The Past returns; they feel | |
| What they are, alas! what they were. | |
| They, not Nature, are chang’d. | 95 |
| Well I know what they feel. | |
| Hush! for tears | |
| Begin to steal to their eyes. | |
| Hush! for fruit | |
| Grows from such sorrow as theirs. | 100 |
| |
| And they remember | |
| With piercing untold anguish | |
| The proud boasting of their youth. | |
| And the mists how Nature was fair. | |
| And the mists of delusion, | 105 |
| And the scales of habit, | |
| Fall away from their eyes. | |
| And they see, for a moment, | |
| Stretching out, like the Desert | |
| In its weary, unprofitable length, | 110 |
| Their faded, ignoble lives. | |
| |
| While 2 the locks are yet brown on thy head, | |
| While the soul still looks through thine eyes, | |
| While the heart still pours | |
| The mantling blood to thy cheek, | 115 |
| Sink, O Youth, in thy soul! | |
| Yearn to the greatness of Nature! | |
| Rally the good in the depths of thyself! | |
