Page:Sarah Sheppard - L. E. L.pdf/30

 to induce inquiry after some supreme good,—some all-sufficient object of felicity,–whose glory it should be man's chief aim to promote, and whose favour it will be found better than life to have secured. What is the end of all else, the poet tells us by the sad and warning voice of "Experience:"—

My very heart is filled with tears! I seem As I were struggling under some dark dream, Which roughly bore me down life's troubled stream.

The past weighs heavily upon my soul, A tyrant mastering me with stern control, The present has no rest—the future has no goal;

For what can be again, but what has been? Soon the young leaf forgets its early green, And shadows with our sunshine intervene.

Quenched is the spirit's morning wing of fire, We calculate where once we could aspire, And the high hope sets in some low desire. **** *   **** * Alas! our kindest feelings are the root Of all experience's most bitter fruit, They waste the life whose charm they constitute.

At length they harden, and we feel no more All that we felt so bitterly before, But with the softness is the sweetness o'er.

Of things we once enjoyed how few remain! Youth's flowers are flung behind us, and in vain We would stoop down to gather them again.

Why do we think of this? bind the red wreath, Float down time's waters to the viol's breath, Wot not what those cold waters hide beneath.

We cannot do this: from the sparkling brink Drops the glad rose, and the bright waters shrink; While in the midst of mirth we pause to think.