Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/340

 J30 CONSOLATIONS OF SOLITUDE

So virtuous age sinks calmly down,

Refulgent to the last, And leaves the light of worth's renown

To beautify the past.

��THE EXPERIENCED PHILOSOPHER.

HIS REPROOF OF THE WISH TO COMMENCE LIFE ANEW.

How has thy life been spent, that, in those years

When time should hail thee master, thou wouldst still

Tread backward to the senseless age of tears. To be once more the slave of others' will.

And live a creeping, weeping, cowering thing,

Rather than crown thyself o'er self a king ?

What art hath childhood or to soften fate

Or force subdue — reason with will at strife ?

And wouldst thou fly from thought to thoughtless state ? Ah, brief at best the years of rational life !

Full soon shall dreary dotage seal each sense

In a dull, fretful, drivelling impotence.

Yet, if to 'scape from sorrow thou wouldst fly From life's gray, sober landscape to the green,

Even children, too, are doomed full oft to cry; The cause though light, the suffering is as keen.

Sorrows, like dogs, will track us till we die —

The only friends of man that ne'er will fly.

Or dost thou long in loving arms to rest

From labor and a self-dependent state .-' Or art thou friendless ? The fond nurse's breast

Seems for the child more miserable fate,

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