An Afternoon Soliloquy.

How good some years of life may be!     Ah, once it was not guessed by me,     Past years would shine, like some bright sea,     In golden dusks of memory.     Ere then the music of the dawn     From me had long since surged away;     And in the disillusioned day     Of chill mid-life I plodded on.     Anon a fuller music thrilled     My world with meaning undertones,     That elegized our vanished ones,     And told how Lethe's banks are filled     With wordless calm, and wistful rest,     And sweet large silence, solemn sleep,     And brooding shadows cool and deep,     And grand oblivions, undistressed.     No more 'twas "Lethe rolling doom,"     But Lethe calling, "Come to me,     And wash away all memory     And taint of what precedes the tomb;     And know the changeless afterthought,     Half guessed, half named from age to age,     Wherein I quench the flame and rage     And sorrow with which life is fraught."