Page:Poems (Bryant, 1821).djvu/16



But oh, despair not of their fate who rise

To dwell upon the earth when we withdraw;

Lo! the same shaft, by which the righteous dies,

Strikes through the wretch that scoff’d at mercy’s law,

And trode his brethren down, and felt no awe

Of him who will avenge them. Stainless worth,

Such as the sternest age of virtue saw,

Ripens, meanwhile, till time shall call it forth

From the low modest shade, to light and bless the earth.

Has Nature, in her calm majestic march,

Falter’d with age at last? does the bright sun

Grow dim in heaven? or, in their far blue arch,

Sparkle the crowd of stars, when day is done,

Less brightly? when the dew lipp’d spring comes on,

Breathes she with airs less soft, or scents the sky

With flowers less fair than when her reign begun?

Does prodigal autumn, to our age, deny

The plenty that once swell’d beneath his sober eye?