Genius and its rewards are briefly told A liberal nature and a niggard doom, A difficult journey to a splendid tomb. New writ, nor lightly weighed that story old In gentle Goldsmith’s life I here unfold: 5 Through other than lone wild or desert gloom, In its mere joy and pain, its blight and bloom, Adventurous. Come with me and behold, O friend with heart as gentle for distress, As resolute with wise true thoughts to bind 10 The happiest to the unhappiest of our kind, That there is fiercer crowded misery In garret toil and London loneliness Than in cruel islands mid the far-off sea. _John Forster._ CCLXXXI _SONNET._ Sad is our youth, for it is ever going, Crumbling away beneath our very feet; Sad is our life, for onward it is flowing In current unperceived, because so fleet; Sad are our hopes, for they were sweet in sowing-- 5 But tares, self-sown, have over-topped the wheat; Sad are our joys, for they were sweet in blowing-- And still, oh still, their dying breath is sweet; And sweet is youth, although it hath bereft us Of that which made our childhood sweeter still; 10 And sweet is middle life, for it hath left us A newer good to cure an older ill; And sweet are all things when we learn to prize them Not for their sake, but His who grants them or denies them. _Aubrey De Vere._ CCLXXXII _THE UGLY PRINCESS._ My parents bow, and lead them forth, For all the crowd to see-- Ah well! the people might not care To cheer a dwarf like me. They little know how I could love, 5 How I could plan and toil, To swell those drudges’ scanty gains, Their mites of rye and oil. They little know what dreams have been My playmates, night and day, 10 Of equal kindness, helpful care, A mother’s perfect sway. Now earth to earth in convent walls, To earth in churchyard sod: I was not good enough for man, 15 And so am given to God. _Charles Kingsley._ CCLXXXIII _WEARINESS._ O little feet! that such long years Must wander on through hopes and fears, Must ache and bleed beneath your load; I, nearer to the wayside inn Where toil shall cease and rest begin, Am weary, thinking of your road! O little hands! that, weak or strong, Have still to serve or rule so long, Have still so long to give or ask; I, who so much with book and pen 10 Have toiled among my fellow-men, Am weary, thinking of your task.