Carolling and shouting Over tombs, amid graves See! on the cumber'd plain Clearing a stage, Scattering the past about, Comes the new age! Bards make new poems, Statesmen new systems, Critics new rules! All things begin again; Life is their prize; Earth with their deeds they fill, Fill with their cries! Poet, what ails thee, then? Say, why so mute? Forth with thy praising voice! Forth with thy flute! Loiterer! why sittest thou Sunk in thy dream? Tempts not the bright new age? Shines not its stream? Look, ah, what genius, Art, science, wit! Soldiers like Cæsar, Statesmen like Pitt! Sculptors like Phidias, Raphaels in shoals, Poets like Shakspeare— Beautiful souls! See, on their glowing cheeks Heavenly the flush! —Ah, so the silence was! So was the hush! The world but feels the present's spell, The poet feels the past as well; Whatever men have done, might do, Whatever thought, might think it too. SWITZERLAND. 1. A Memory-Picture. YOUNG, I said: 'A face is gone If too hotly mused upon; And our best impressions are Many a face I then let flee, Ah, is faded utterly! Ere the parting hour go by, Marguerite says: As last year went, Paint that lilac kerchief, bound Let the fluttering fringes streak Paint that figure's pliant grace As she toward me lean'd her face, Many a broken promise then Was new made-to break again. Quick, thy tablets, Memory! Paint those eyes, so blue, so kind, Paint, with their impetuous stress Of enquiring tenderness, Those frank eyes, where deep doth lie An angelic gravity! Ere the parting hour go by, What, my friends, these feeble lines To paint ill as I have done, Time's gay minions, pleased you see, Time, your master, governs me; Pleased, you mock the fruitless cry: 'Quick, thy tablets, Memory!' Ah, too true! Time's current strong Leaves us firm to nothing long. Yet, if little stays with man, Ah, retain we all we can! If the clear impression dies, |