Have known thee watching, all an April day, The springing pastures and the feeding kine; And marked thee, when the stars come out and shine, Through the long dewy grass move slow away. In autumn, on the skirts of Bagley-wood, Sees thee, nor stops his meal, nor fears at all! And once, in winter, on the causeway chill Where home through flooded fields foot-travelers go, And gained the white brow of the Cumner range; But what I dream! Two hundred years are flown That thou wert wandered from the studious walls And thou from earth art gone Long since, and in some quiet churchyard laid! Some country nook, where o'er thy unknown grave Tall grasses and white flowering nettles wave— Under a dark red-fruited yew-tree's shade. —No, no, thou hast not felt the lapse of hours! 'Tis that from change to change their being rolls; 'Tis that repeated shocks, again, again, Exhaust the energy of strongest souls, And numb the elastic powers; Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen, Our well-worn life, and are—what we have been! Thou hast not lived, why shouldst thou perish, so? Else wert thou long since numbered with the dead— And we ourselves shall go; But thou possessest an immortal lot, And we imagine thee exempt from age For early didst thou leave the world, with powers Firm to their mark, not spent on other things; Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings. O life unlike to ours! Who fluctuate idly without term or scope, Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives, Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope. Thou waitest for the spark from Heaven: and we, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly willed, Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new; And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day- Yes! we await it, but it still delays, And then we suffer! and amongst us one, Tells us his misery's birth and growth and signs, And how the breast was soothed, and how the head, And all his hourly varied anodynes. This for our wisest! and we others pine, And wish the long unhappy dream would end, Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray, Roaming the countryside, a truant boy, Nursing thy project in unclouded joy, And every doubt long blown by time away. O born in days when wits were fresh and clear, Before this strange disease of modern life, Its heads o'ertaxed, its palsied hearts, was rife- Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood! From her false friend's approach in Hades turn, Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade, With a free onward impulse brushing through, Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales, But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly! For strong the infection of our mental strife, Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest; And we should win thee from thy own fair life, Like us distracted, and like us unblest! Soon, soon thy cheer would die, Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfixed thy powers, Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles! And saw the merry Grecian coaster come, The young light-hearted masters of the waves; To where the Atlantic raves Outside the western straits, and unbent sails There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come; |