The past returns in all we see, The billowy cloud, and branching tree; In all we hear--the bird and bee Remind of pleasures cherish'd; When all is lost it loved the best, Oh! pity on that vacant breast, Which would not rather be at rest, Than pine amid the perish'd! X. A balmy eve! the round white moon Emparadises midmost June, Tune trills the nightingale on tune-- What magic! when a lover, To him, who now, gray-haired and lone, Bends o'er the sad sepulchral stone Of her, whose heart was once his own: Ah! bright dream briefly over! XI. See how from port the vessel glides With streamered masts, o'er halcyon tides; Its laggard course the sea-boy chides, All loath that calms should bind him; But distance only chains him more, With love-links, to his native shore, And sleep's best dream is to restore The home he left behind him. XII. To sanguine youth's enraptured eye, Heaven has its reflex in the sky, The winds themselves have melody, Like harp some seraph sweepeth; A silver decks the hawthorn bloom, A legend shrines the mossy tomb, And spirits throng the starry gloom, Her reign when midnight keepeth. XIII. Silence o'erhangs the Delphic cave; Where strove the bravest of the brave, Naught met the wandering Byron, save A lone, deserted barrow; And Fancy's iris waned away, When Wordsworth ventured to survey, Beneath the light of common day, The dowie dens of Yarrow. XIV. Little we dream--when life is new, And Nature fresh and fair to view, When throbs the heart to pleasure true, As if for naught it wanted,-- That, year by year, and ray by ray, Romance's sunlight dies away, And long before the hair is gray, The heart is disenchanted. FOOTNOTES: [17] A clearer day has dispelled the marvels, which showed themselves in heaven above and in earth beneath, when twilight and superstition went hand in hand. Horace's "Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas, Nocturnos Lemures, portentaque Thessala," as well as Milton's "Gorgons, Hydras, and Chimæras dire," have all been found wanting, when reduced to the admeasurements of science; and the "sounds that syllable men's names, on sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses," are quenched in silence, or only exist in what James Hogg most poetically terms "That undefined and mingled hum, Voice of the desert, never dumb." The inductive philosophy was "the bare bodkin" which gave many a pleasant vision "its quietus." "Homo, naturæ minister," saith Lord Bacon, "et interpres, tantum facit et intelligit, quantum de naturæ ordine se vel mente observaverit: nec amplius scit nec potest."--_Nov. Organum_, Aph. I.