In a strain of equal nobility, but of more personal and subjective
effect, the thought is completed:
So likewise, my own soul, from these obscure
Days without glory, wings its flight afar
Backward, and journeys to the years of youth
And morning. Oh, give me back once more,
Oh, give me, Lord, one hour of youth again!
For in that time I was serene and bold,
And uncontaminate, and enraptured with
The universe. I did not know the pangs
Of the proud mind, nor the sweet miseries
Of love; and I had never gathered yet,
After those fires so sweet in burning, bitter
Handfuls of ashes, that, with tardy tears
Sprinkled, at last have nourished into bloom
The solitary flower of penitence.
The baseness of the many was unknown,
And civic woes had not yet sown with salt
Life's narrow field. Ah! then the infinite
Voices that Nature sends her worshipers
From land, from sea, and from the cloudy depths
Of heaven smote the echoing soul of youth
To music. And at the first morning sigh
Of the poor wood-lark,--at the measured bell
Of homeward flocks, and at the opaline wings
Of dragon-flies in their aerial dances
Above the gorgeous carpets of the marsh,--
At the wind's moan, and at the sudden gleam
Of lamps lighting in some far town by night,--
And at the dash of rain that April shoots
Through the air odorous with the smitten dust,--
My spirits rose, and glad and swift my thought
Over the sea of being sped all-sails.
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