The Youth Of Man

We, O Nature, depart:     Thou survivest us: this,     This, I know, is the law.     Yes, but more than this,     Thou who seest us die     Seest us change while we live;     Seest our dreams one by one,     Seest our errors depart:     Watchest us, Nature, throughout,     Mild and inscrutably calm.     Well for us that we change!     Well for us that the Power     Which in our morning prime     Saw the mistakes of our youth,     Sweet, and forgiving, and good,     Sees the contrition of age!     Behold, O Nature, this pair!     See them to-night where they stand,     Not with the halo of youth     Crowning their brows with its light,     Not with the sunshine of hope,     Not with the rapture of spring,     Which they had of old, when they stood     Years ago at my side     In this self same garden, and said;     We are young, and the world is ours,     For man is the king of the world.     Fools that these mystics are     Who prate of Nature! but she     Has neither beauty, nor warmth,     Nor life, nor emotion, nor power.     But Man has a thousand gifts,     And the generous dreamer invests     The senseless world with them all.     Nature is nothing! her charm     Lives in our eyes which can paint,     Lives in our hearts which can feel!     Thou, O Nature, wert mute,     Mute as of old: days flew,     Days and years; and Time     With the ceaseless stroke of his wings     Brushd off the bloom from their soul.     Clouded and dim grew their eye;     Languid their heart; for Youth     Quickend its pulses no more.     Slowly within the walls     Of an ever-narrowing world     They droopd, they grew blind, they grew old.     Thee and their Youth in thee,     Nature, they saw no more.     Murmur of living!     Stir of existence!     Soul of the world!     Make, oh make yourselves felt     To the dying spirit of Youth.     Come, like the breath of the spring.     Leave not a human soul     To grow old in darkness and pain.     Only the living can feel you     But leave us not while we live.     Here they stand to-night     Here, where this grey balustrade     Crowns the still valley: behind     Is the castled house with its woods     Which shelterd their childhood, the sun     On its ivied windows: a scent     From the grey-walld gardens, a breath     Of the fragrant stock and the pink,     Perfumes the evening air.     Their children play on the lawns.     They stand and listen: they hear     The childrens shouts, and, at times,     Faintly, the bark of a dog     From a distant farm in the hills:     Nothing besides: in front     The wide, wide valley outspreads     To the dim horizon, reposd     In the twilight, and bathd in dew,     Corn-field and hamlet and copse     Darkening fast; but a light,     Far off, a glory of day,     Still plays on the city spires:     And there in the dusk by the walls,     With the grey mist marking its course     Through the silent flowery land,     On, to the plains, to the sea,     Floats the Imperial Stream.     Well I know what they feel.     They gaze, and the evening wind     Plays on their faces: they gaze;     Airs from the Eden of Youth     Awake and stir in their soul:     The Past returns; they feel     What they are, alas! what they were.     They, not Nature, are changd.     Well I know what they feel.     Hush! for tears     Begin to steal to their eyes.     Hush! for fruit     Grows from such sorrow as theirs.     And they remember     With piercing untold anguish     The proud boasting of their youth.     And they feel how Nature was fair.     And the mists of delusion,     And the scales of habit,     Fall away from their eyes.     And they see, for a moment,     Stretching out, like the Desert     In its weary, unprofitable length,     Their faded, ignoble lives.     While the locks are yet brown on thy head,     While the soul still looks through thine eyes,     While the heart still pours     The mantling blood to thy cheek,     Sink, O Youth, in thy soul     Yearn to the greatness of Nature!     Rally the good in the depths of thyself!