Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 101.djvu/193

Rh that his feet have trodden since the farthest back hour at which memory pauses?"—and after passionately recalling the joys and sorrows of those few years, "which we now call transitory, but which our Boyhood felt as if they would be endless"—and the season of youth, "with its insupportable sunshine, and its magnificent storms,"—and that meridian Life, which "seems, now that it is gone, to have been of a thousand years"—he adds: "Is it gone? Its skirts are yet hovering on the horizon—and is there yet another Life destined for us? That Life which we fear to face—Age, Old Age? Four dreams within a dream, and then we may awake in Heaven!" The four dreams are over now, and we trust the waking is as he would have it. In that trust, and awed by the associations it excites, we shrink from discussing what some of his critics are disputing about—viz., the measure of his fidelity in doing the earthly work appointed him.It is for his Taskmaster to decide, and for none other, whether he did it all as in his Taskmaster's eye. We can but murmur over his grave, from the same sylvan chant,

Prolix as our prosing has been, we have omitted many points to which allusion was proposed. But there will be a Biography ere long, we presume, that ought to be passingly rich in interest; and until its appearance the reader will, without much pressing, allow us to defer any further discourse.

thee! life is daily dying,

By the pulses in thy heart

Thou canst feel the seconds flying,

Thou mayst count them as they part.

Over Time's deep solemn ocean

Currents flow that bear our fate,

Launch thee on the favouring motion,

Thou art lost if then too late.

When thine angel, ever waking,

Stirs the hidden springs for thee,

Hail and seize the brightly breaking

Tide and opportunity!