Or do I wait, to hear some gray-haired king Unravel all his many-colored lore; Whose mind hath known all arts of governing, Mused much, loved life a little, loathed it more? Down the pale cheek, long lines of shadow slope, Which years, and curious thought, and suffering give. --Thou hast foreknown the vanity of hope, Foreseen thy harvest, yet proceed’st to live. O meek anticipant of that sure pain Whose sureness gray-haired scholars hardly learn! What wonder shall time breed, to swell thy strain? What heavens, what earth, what suns, shalt thou discern? Ere the long night, whose stillness brooks no star, Match that funereal aspect with her pall, I think thou wilt have fathomed life too far, Have known too much--or else forgotten all. The Guide of our dark steps, a triple veil Betwixt our senses and our sorrow keeps; Hath sown with cloudless passages the tale Of grief, and eased us with a thousand sleeps. Ah! not the nectarous poppy lovers use, Not daily labor’s dull, Lethæan spring, Oblivion in lost angels can infuse Of the soiled glory, and the trailing wing; And though thou glean, what strenuous gleaners may, In the thronged fields where winning comes by strife; And though the just sun gild, as mortals pray, Some reaches of thy storm-vexed stream of life; Though that blank sunshine blind thee; though the cloud That severed the world’s march and thine, be gone; Though ease dulls grace, and wisdom be too proud To halve a lodging that was all her own,-- Once, ere thy day go down, thou shalt discern, Oh, once, ere night, in thy success, thy chain! Ere the long evening close, thou shalt return, And wear this majesty of grief again. _A QUESTION._ TO FAUSTA. Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows Like the wave; Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men. Love lends life a little grace, A few sad smiles; and then Both are laid in one cold place,-- In the grave. Dreams dawn and fly, friends smile and die Like spring flowers; Our vaunted life is one long funeral. Men dig graves with bitter tears For their dead hopes; and all, Mazed with doubts and sick with fears, Count the hours. We count the hours! These dreams of ours, False and hollow, Do we go hence, and find they are not dead? Joys we dimly apprehend Faces that smiled and fled, Hopes born here, and born to end, Shall we follow? _IN UTRUMQUE PARATUS._ If, in the silent mind of One all-pure, At first imagined lay The sacred world; and by procession sure From those still deeps, in form and color drest, Seasons alternating, and night and day, The long-mused thought to north, south, east, and west, Took then its all-seen way;