22. 'O Spring, of hope, and love, and youth, and gladness Wind-winged emblem! brightest, best and fairest! Whence comest thou, when, with dark Winter's sadness _3660 The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest? Sister of joy, thou art the child who wearest Thy mother's dying smile, tender and sweet; Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet, _3665 Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding-sheet. 23. 'Virtue, and Hope, and Love, like light and Heaven, Surround the world.--We are their chosen slaves. Has not the whirlwind of our spirit driven Truth's deathless germs to thought's remotest caves? _3670 Lo, Winter comes!--the grief of many graves, The frost of death, the tempest of the sword, The flood of tyranny, whose sanguine waves Stagnate like ice at Faith the enchanter's word, And bind all human hearts in its repose abhorred. _3675 24. 'The seeds are sleeping in the soil: meanwhile The Tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey, Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile Because they cannot speak; and, day by day, The moon of wasting Science wanes away _3680 Among her stars, and in that darkness vast The sons of earth to their foul idols pray, And gray Priests triumph, and like blight or blast A shade of selfish care o'er human looks is cast. 25. 'This is the winter of the world;--and here _3685 We die, even as the winds of Autumn fade, Expiring in the frore and foggy air. Behold! Spring comes, though we must pass, who made The promise of its birth,--even as the shade Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings _3690 The future, a broad sunrise; thus arrayed As with the plumes of overshadowing wings, From its dark gulf of chains, Earth like an eagle springs. 26. 'O dearest love! we shall be dead and cold Before this morn may on the world arise; _3695 Wouldst thou the glory of its dawn behold? Alas! gaze not on me, but turn thine eyes On thine own heart--it is a paradise Which everlasting Spring has made its own, And while drear Winter fills the naked skies, _3700 Sweet streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh-blown, Are there, and weave their sounds and odours into one. 27. 'In their own hearts the earnest of the hope Which made them great, the good will ever find; And though some envious shade may interlope _3705 Between the effect and it, One comes behind, Who aye the future to the past will bind-- Necessity, whose sightless strength for ever Evil with evil, good with good must wind In bands of union, which no power may sever: _3710 They must bring forth their kind, and be divided never!