So speak'st thou, friend, how stronger far than I; As from Experience--that sure port serene-- Thou look'st; and straight, a coldness wraps the sky, The summer glory withers from the scene, Scared by the solemn spell; behold them fly, The godlike images that seem'd so fair! Silent the playful Muse--the rosy Hours Halt in their dance; and the May-breathing flowers Pall from the sister-Graces' waving hair. Sweet-mouth'd Apollo breaks his golden lyre, Hermes, the wand with many a marvel rife;-- The veil, rose-woven by the young Desire With dreams, drops from the hueless cheeks of Life. The world seems what it _is_--A Grave! and Love Casts down the bondage wound his eyes above, And _sees_!--He sees but images of clay Where he dream'd gods; and sighs--and glides away. The youngness of the Beautiful grows old, And on thy lips the bride's sweet kiss seems cold; And in the crowd of joys--upon thy throne Thou sitt'st in state, and harden'st into stone. * * * * * CALEB STUKELY. PART XII. THE PARSONAGE. It was not without misgiving that I knocked modestly at the door of Mr Jehu Tomkins. For himself, there was no solidity in his moral composition, nothing to grapple or rely upon. He was a small weak man of no character at all, and but for his powerful wife and active partner, would have become the smallest of unknown quantities in the respectable parish that contained him. Upon his own weak shoulders he could not have sustained the burden of an establishment, and must inevitably have dwindled into the lightest of light porters, or the most aged of errand-boys. Nothing could have saved him from the operation of a law, as powerful and certain as that of gravitation, in virtue of which the soft and empty-headed of this world walk to the wall, and resign, without a murmur, their places to their betters. As for the deaconess, I have said already that the fact of her being a lady, and the possessor of a heart, constituted the only ground of hope that I could have in reference to her. This I felt to be insecure enough when I held the knocker in my hand, and remembered all at once the many little tales that I had heard, every one of which went far to prove that ladies may be ladies without the generous weakness of their sex,--and carry hearts about with them as easily as they carry bags.