ON REVISITING TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
I HAVE a debt of my heart's own to Thee,
School of my Soul! old lime and cloister shade!
Which I, strange suitor, should lament to see
Fully acquitted and exactly paid.
The first ripe taste of manhood's best delights,
Knowledge imbibed, while mind and heart agree,
In sweet belated talk on winter nights,
With friends whom growing time keeps dear to me,-
Such things I owe thee, and not only these:
I owe thee the far-beaco'ning memories
Of the young dead, who, having crossed the tide
Of Life where it was narrow, deep, and clear,
Now cast their brightness from the further side
On the dark-flowing hours I breast in fear.
FAIR thoughts of good, and fantasies as fair!
Why is it your content to dwell confined
In the dark cave of meditative mind,
Nor show your forms and colours otherwhere?
Why taste ye not the beautiful free air
Of life and action? If the wintry wind
Rages sometimes, must noble growth be pined,
And fresh extrava'gant boughs lopped off by care?
Behold the budding and the flowe'ring flowers,
That die, and in their seed have life anew;
Oh! if the promptings of our better hours
With vegetative virtue sprung and grew,
They would fill up the room of living Time,
And leave the world small space to nourish weeds of crime.
To live for present life, and feel no crime-
To see in life a merry-morrice craft,
Where he has done the best who most has laughed,
Is Youth's fit heaven, nor thus the less sublime :
But not to all men, in their best of prime,
Is given by Nature this miraculous draught
Of inward happiness, which, hourly quaffed,
Seems to the reveller deep beyond all time.
Therefore encumber not the sad young heart
With exhortations to impossible joy,
And charges of morose and thankless mood;
For there is working in that Girl or Boy
A power which will and must remain apart-
Only by Love approached and understood.
THERE is a world where struggle and stern toil
Are all the nurture of the soul of man-
Ordain'd to raise, from life's ungrateful soil,
Pain as he must, and Pleasure as he can.
Then to that other world of thought from this
Turns the sad soul, all hopeful of repose,
But round in weirdest metamorphosis,
False shapes and true, divine and devilish, close.
Above these two, and resting upon each
A meditative and compassionate eye,
Broodeth the Spirit of God: thence evermore,
On those poor wanderers cast from shore to shore,
Falleth a voice, omnipotent to teach
Them that will hear,--" Despair not! it is I."
"ANIMA MUNDI"-of thyself existing,
Without diversity or change to fear,
Say, has this Life to which we cling persisting,
Part or communion with thy steadfast sphere?
Does thy serene eternity sublime
Embrace the slaves of Circumstance and Time?
Could we remain continually content
To heap fresh pleasure on the coming day,
Could we rest happy in the sole intent
To make the hours more graceful or more gay;
Then must the essence of our nature be
That of the beasts that perish, not of Thee.
But if we mourn, not because time is fleeting,
Not because life is short and some die young,
But because parting ever follows meeting,
And, while our hearts with constant loss are wrung,
Our minds are tossed in doubt from sea to sea,
Then may we claim community with thee.
We cannot live by instincts-forced to let
To-morrow's wave obliterate our to-day-
See faces only once--read and forget-
Behold Truth's rays prismatically play
About our mortal eye, and never shine
In one white daylight, simple and divine.
We would erect some Thought the world above,
And dwell in it for ever-we would make
Some moment of young Friendship or First-love
Into a dream, from which we would not wake;
We would contrast our Action with Repose,
Like the deep stream that widens as it flows.
We would, indeed, be somewise as Thou art,
Not spring and bud and flower and fade and fall,—
Not fix our intellects on some scant part
Of Nature, but enjoy or feel it all:
We would assert the privilege of a soul,
In that it knows-to understand the Whole.
If such things are within us—God is good—
And flight is destined for the callow wing,
And the high appetite implies the food,
And souls must reach the level whence they spring;
O Life of very Life! set free our Powers,
Hasten the travail of the yearning hours.
Thou! to whom old Philosophy bent low,
To the wise few mysteriously revealed;
Thou! whom each humble Christian worships now,
In the poor hamlet and the open field;
Once an Idea-now Comforter and Friend,
Hope of the human Heart! Descend! Descend!
YOUTH, that pursuest with such eager pace
Thy even way,
Thou pantest on to win a mournful race:
Then stay! oh, stay!
Pause and luxuriate in thy sunny plain;
Loiter,-enjoy :
Once past, Thou never wilt come back again,
A second Boy.
The hills of Manhood wear a noble face,
When seen from far;
The mist of light from which they take their grace
Hides what they are.
The dark and weary path those cliffs between
Thou canst not know,
And how it leads to regions never-green,
Pause, while thou mayst, nor deem that fate thy gain Which, all too fast,
Will drive thee forth from this delicious plain,
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