He who governs the creation,
In his providence, assigned
Such a gradual declination

To the life of human kind.

Yet we mark it not; fruits redden,

Fresh flowers blow, as flowers have blown, And the heart is loath to deaden

Hopes that she so long hath known.

Be thou wiser, youthful Maiden!
And when thy decline shall come,
Let not flowers, or boughs fruit-laden,
Hide the knowledge of thy doom.

Now, even now, ere wrapped in slumber,
Fix thine eyes upon the sea

That absorbs time, space, and number;
Look thou to Eternity!

Follow thou the flowing river

On whose breast are hither borne
All deceived, and each deceiver,
Through the gates of night and morn;

Through the year's successive portals;
Through the bounds which many a star
Marks, not mindless of frail mortals,
When his light returns from far.

Thus when thou with Time hast travelled
Toward the mighty gulf of things,

And the mazy stream unravelled
With thy best imaginings, -

Think, if thou on beauty leanest,
Think how pitiful that stay,

Did not virtue give the meanest
Charms superior to decay.

Duty, like a strict preceptor,

Sometimes frowns, or seems to frown;

Choose her thistle for thy sceptre,

While youth's roses are thy crown.

Grasp it, if thou shrink and tremble,
Fairest damsel of the green,
Thou wilt lack the only symbol
That proclaims a genuine queen,

And insures those palms of honor
Which selected spirits wear,
Bending low before the Donor,
Lord of heaven's unchanging year!

XVIII.

THE NORMAN BOY.

HIGH on a broad, unfertile tract of forest-skirted Down.

Nor kept by Nature for herself, nor made by man

his own,

From home and company remote and every playful

joy,

Served, tending a few sheep and goats, a ragged Norman Boy.

Him never saw I, nor the spot; but from an English Dame,

Stranger to me and yet my friend, a simple notice

came,

With suit that I would speak in verse of that sequestered child,

Whom, one bleak winter's day, she met upon the dreary Wild.

His flock, along the woodland's edge with relics sprinkled o'er

Of last night's snow, beneath a sky threatening the fall of more,

Where tufts of herbage tempted each, were busy at their feed,

And the poor Boy was busier still, with work of

There was he, where of branches rent and withered and decayed,

For covert from the keen north wind, his hands a hut had made.

A tiny tenement, forsooth, and frail, as needs must be

A thing of such materials framed, by a builder such as he.

The hut stood finished by his pains, nor seemingly lacked aught

'That skill or means of his could add, but the architect had wrought

Some limber twigs into a Cross, well shaped with fingers nice,

To be engrafted on the top of his small edifice.

That Cross he now was fastening there, as the surest power and best

For supplying all deficiencies, all wants of the rude

nest

In which, from burning heat, or tempest driving far and wide,

The innocent Boy, else shelterless, his lonely head must hide.

That Cross belike he also raised as a standard for

the true

And faithful service of his heart in the worst that

might ensue

Of hardship and distressful fear, amid the house

less waste

Where he, in his poor self so weak, by Providence was placed.

Here, Lady! might I cease; but nay, let us before we part

With this dear holy shepherd-boy breathe a prayer of earnest heart,

That unto him, where'er shall lie his life's appointed way,

The Cross, fixed in his soul, may prove an allsufficing stay.

XIX.

THE POET'S DREAM.

SEQUEL TO THE NORMAN BOY.

JUST as those final words were penned, the sun broke out in power,

And gladdened all things; but, as chanced, within

that very hour,

Air blackened, thunder growled, fire flashed from clouds that hid the sky,

And, for the Subject of my Verse, I heaved a pensive sigh.