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 No cloud or passion to usurp thy brow, Or mar thy hospitality; no wave Of mortal tumult to obliterate Thy soul's marmoreal calmness. Grief should be Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate; Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free; Strong to consume small troubles; to commend Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end.

HUMAN LIFE

Sad is our youth, for it is ever going, Crumbling away beneath our very feet; Sad is our life, for onward it is flowing, In current unperceived because so fleet; Sad are our hopes, for they were sweet in sowing, But tares, self-sown, have overtopped the wheat; Sad are our joys, for they were sweet in blowing; And still, O still, their dying breath is sweet; And sweet is youth, although it hath bereft us Of that which made our childhood sweeter still; And sweeter our life's decline, for it hath left us A nearer Good to cure an older Ill; And sweet are all things, when we learn to prize them Not for their sake, but His who grants them or denies them.