Just as old age is creeping on space, And clouds come o'er the sunset of our day, They kindly leave us, though not quite alone, But in good company--the gout or stone.
What opposite discoveries we have seen! (Signs of true genius, and of empty pockets.) One makes new noses, one a guillotine, One breaks your bones, one sets them in their sockets; But vaccination certainly has been A kind antithesis to Congreve's rockets.
I have not loved the World, nor the World me; I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed To its idolatries a patient knee, Nor coined my cheek to smiles,-nor cried aloud In worship of an echo.
So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain, No more through rolling clouds to soar again, View'd his own feather on the fatal dart, And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart.
A sleep without dreams, after a rough day of toil, is what we covet most; and yet
How clay shrinks back from more quiescent clay!
The very Suicide that pays his debt at once without installments
(an old way of paying debts, which creditors regret)
Lets out impatiently his rushing breath, less from disgust of life than dread of death.
...And these vicissitudes come best in youth;
For when they happen at a riper age,
People are apt to blame the Fates, forsooth,
And wonder Providence is not more sage.
Adversity is the first path to truth:
He who hath proved war, storm, or woman's rage,
Whether his winters be eighteen or eighty,
Has won experience which is deem'd so weighty.
Parting day Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues With a new colour as it gasps away, The last still loveliest, till-'t is gone, and all is gray.