GROWING OLD.

WHAT is it to grow old?

Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The lustre of the eye?

Is it for beauty to forgo her wreath?

-Yes, but not this alone.

Is it to feel our strength

Not our bloom only, but our strength-decay? Is it to feel each limb

Grow stiffer, every function less exact,

Each nerve more loosely strung?

Yes, this, and more; but not,

Ah! 'tis not what in youth we dream'd 'twould be. 'Tis not to have our life

Mellow'd and soften'd as with sunset-glow,
A golden day's decline.

'Tis not to see the world

As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirr'd;

And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,
The years that are no more.

It is to spend long days

And not once feel that we were ever young;

It is to add, immured

In the hot prison of the present, month
To month with weary pain.

It is to suffer this,

And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel.
Deep in our hidden heart

Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
But no emotion-none.

It is last stage of all—

When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,

To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost,
Which blamed the living man.

THE PROGRESS OF POESY.

A Variation.

YOUTH rambles on life's arid mount,
And strikes the rock, and finds the vein,
And brings the water from the fount,
The fount which shall not flow again.

The man mature with labour chops
For the bright stream a channel grand,
And sees not that the sacred drops
Ran off and vanish'd out of hand.

And then the old man totters nigh,
And feebly rakes among the stones.
The mount is mute, the channel dry;
And down he lays his weary bones.

PIS-ALLER.

'MAN is blind because of sin,
Revelation makes him sure;
Without that, who looks within,
Looks in vain, for all's obscure.'

Nay, look closer into man!
Tell me, can you find indeed
Nothing sure, no moral plan

Clear prescribed, without your creed?

'No, I nothing can perceive!
Without that, all's dark for men.
That, or nothing, I believe.'-
For God's sake, believe it then!

THE LAST WORD.

CREEP into thy narrow bed,
Creep, and let no more be said!
Vain thy onset! all stands fast.
Thou thyself must break at last.

Let the long contention cease!

Geese are swans, and swans are geese.

Let them have it how they will!

Thou art tired; best be still.

They out-talk'd thee, hiss'd thee, tore thee?

Better men fared thus before thee;

Fired their ringing shot and pass'd,

Hotly charged-and sank at last.

Charge once more, then, and be dumb!

Let the victors, when they come,

When the forts of folly fall,

Find thy body by the wall!

A NAMELESS EPITAPH.

Ask not my name, O friend!

That Being only, which hath known each man

From the beginning, can

Remember each unto the end.

EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA.

A DRAMATIC POEM.

PERSONS.

EMPEDOCLES.

PAUSANIAS, a Physician.

CALLICLES, a young Harp-player.

The Scene of the Poem is on Mount Etna; at first in the forest region, afterwards on the summit of the mountain.

ACT I, SCENE I.

Morning. A Pass in the forest region of Etna.

CALLICLES.

(Alone, resting on a rock by the path.)

THE mules, I think, will not be here this hour;
They feel the cool wet turf under their feet
By the stream-side, after the dusty lanes
In which they have toil'd all night from Catana,
And scarcely will they budge a yard. O Pan,
How gracious is the mountain at this hour!
A thousand times have I been here alone
Or with the revellers from the mountain-towns,
But never on so fair a morn;-the sun
Is shining on the brilliant mountain-crests,
And on the highest pines; but farther down,
Here in the valley, is in shade; the sward

Is dark, and on the stream the mist still hangs;
One sees one's foot-prints crush'd in the wet grass,

One's breath curls in the air; and on these pines
That climb from the stream's edge, the long grey tufts,
Which the goats love, are jewell'd thick with dew.
Here will I stay till the slow litter comes
I have my harp too-that is well.-Apollo!
What mortal could be sick or sorry here?
I know not in what mind Empedocles,
Whose mules I follow'd, may be coming up,
But if, as most men say, he is half mad
With exile, and with brooding on his wrongs,
Pausanias, his sage friend, who mounts with him,
Could scarce have lighted on a lovelier cure.
The mules must be below, far down. I hear
Their tinkling bells, mix'd with the song of birds,
Rise faintly to me-now it stops!-Who's here?
Pausanias! and on foot? alone?

Pausanias.

And thou, then?

I left thee supping with Peisianax,

With thy head full of wine, and thy hair crown'd, Touching thy harp as the whim came on thee, And praised and spoil'd by master and by guests Almost as much as the new dancing-girl.

Why hast thou follow'd us?

Callicles.

The night was hot,

And the feast past its prime; so we slipp'd out,
Some of us, to the portico to breathe;-
Peisianax, thou know'st, drinks late;-and then,
As I was lifting my soil'd garland off,

I saw the mules and litter in the court,
And in the litter sate Empedocles;

Thou, too, wast with him. Straightway I sped home;