What mortal, when he saw, Life’s voyage done, his heavenly Friend, Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly,-- “I have kept uninfringed my nature’s law; The inly-written chart thou gavest me, To guide me, I have steered by to the end”? Ah! let us make no claim, On life’s incognizable sea, To too exact a steering of our way; Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim, If some fair coast has lured us to make stay, Or some friend hailed us to keep company. Ay! we would each fain drive At random, and not steer by rule. Weakness! and worse, weakness bestowed in vain! Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive; We rush by coasts where we had lief remain: Man cannot, though he would, live chance’s fool. No! as the foaming swath Of torn-up water, on the main, Falls heavily away with long-drawn roar On either side the black deep-furrowed path Cut by an onward-laboring vessel’s prore, And never touches the ship-side again; Even so we leave behind, As, chartered by some unknown Powers, We stem across the sea of life by night, The joys which were not for our use designed,-- The friends to whom we had no natural right, The homes that were not destined to be ours. _TO A GYPSY CHILD BY THE SEASHORE_; DOUGLAS, ISLE OF MAN. Who taught this pleading to unpractised eyes? Who hid such import in an infant’s gloom? Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise? Who massed, round that slight brow, these clouds of doom? Lo! sails that gleam a moment, and are gone; The swinging waters, and the clustered pier. Not idly earth and ocean labor on, Nor idly do these sea-birds hover near. But thou, whom superfluity of joy Wafts not from thine own thoughts, nor longings vain, Nor weariness, the full-fed soul’s annoy, Remaining in thy hunger and in thy pain; Thou, drugging pain by patience; half averse From thine own mother’s breast, that knows not thee; With eyes which sought thine eyes thou didst converse, And that soul-searching vision fell on me. Glooms that go deep as thine, I have not known; Moods of fantastic sadness, nothing worth. Thy sorrow and thy calmness are thine own; Glooms that enhance and glorify this earth. What mood wears like complexion to thy woe? His, who in mountain glens, at noon of day, Sits rapt, and hears the battle break below? --Ah! thine was not the shelter, but the fray. Some exile’s, mindful how the past was glad? Some angel’s, in an alien planet born? --No exile’s dream was ever half so sad, Nor any angel’s sorrow so forlorn. Is the calm thine of stoic souls, who weigh Life well, and find it wanting, nor deplore; But in disdainful silence turn away, Stand mute, self-centred, stern, and dream no more?