Is to teach thy sons to follow--where a little child may lead-- [Illustration: text decoration] YOUTH AND AGE. Though lovely youth seems far apart to lie It treadeth ever on the heels of age; A few delicious years of transient joy Then turns the fly-leaf of life’s solemn page. Some duties stern blent with the lessons meet From nature’s wondrous garden of delight; Fair meadows, where the gold-eyed marguerite ’Opes to the sun and prays, as we, at night. Then comes a page of slowly dawning thought, The alley-ways where wrong in painted guise Rose-coloured, glows in filmy beauty wrought, “’Tis then that calm reflection makes us wise.” Again a leaf, and then life’s real intent, Forceful with all its earnestness and pain, Presents itself--but useless to lament Past idle hours--Oh! waste them not again. Youth and old age, twin destinies which sway The human leaves; youth feeleth not the blast But age though withered knoweth well that May Must pass December’s threshold at the last. We turn the leaf of this the longer page By some as yet unfinished--let it stand A volume of our hearts, while hoping age Will lead us gently to the shadow land. And when at length our page is nearly closed With all our faults and virtues there impressed, Let age, its mortal garment--quit composed By the sweet thought: “Who made us knowest best.” IMAGINATION. Swifter than light imagination springs Unfettered by its tenement of clay; One moment here, the next on joyous wings Poised o’er the stars which pave the “Milky Way.” Oh boundless space! Oh mighty concaved dome! Graven with tessallated groups of stars; Imagination hears God’s vibrant loom As the frail spirit soars beyond its bars. There jewelled in the blue empyreal height Gleam glittering Sirius, Deneb and Altair; Lo, clustering gems of scintillating light, The brilliant retinue of Crucis fair. Lost in infinitude, it views with awe The majesty of rolling spheres around, Where golden argosies are speeding o’er The vast celestial seas without a bound. It is enough! We may not lift the veil Which shrouds the altar of the Eternal Throne; The thought doth the imagination quail As meek it kneels before the Gate alone. Alone a space, within that vastitude-- Beyond all mundane things of time and sense, And change and swift vicissitude, To worship Him for his beneficence-- Imagination’s bounds are limitless, No star of eve trembling above the sea Hath wider path, or sheddeth sweeter bliss, For it, of all God’s gifts, to man is free. AN AUSTRALIAN REVERIE.