GIVE back the soul of youth once more! The years are fleeting fast away, And this brown hair will soon be gray, These cheeks be pale and furrowed o'er. Ah, no, the child is long since dead, Whose light feet spurred the laggard years, Who breathed in future atmospheres, Ere Youth's eternal Present fled. Dead lies the boy, whose timid eye Shunned every face that spake not love; Whose simple vision looked above, And saw a glory in the sky. And now the youth has sighed his last, I see him cold upon his bier, But in these eyes there is no tear: He joins his brethren of the Past. 'T was time he died: the gates of Art Had shut him from the temple's shrine, And now I climb her mount divine, But with the sinews, not the heart. How many more, O Life! shall I In future offer up to thee? And shall they perish utterly, Upon whose graves I clomb so high? Say, shall I not at last attain Some height, from whence the Past is clear, In whose immortal atmosphere I shall behold my Dead again? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO A DOG'S MEMORY by LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY THE CHURCH WINDOWS by GEORGE HERBERT SENTINEL SONGS: 1 by ABRAM JOSEPH RYAN FRANCE; THE 18TH YEAR OF THESE STATES by WALT WHITMAN THE FOREST PINE by LAURENCE BINYON IN VINCULIS; SONNETS WRITTEN IN AN IRISH PRISON: HONOUR DISHONOURED by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT HINC LACHRIMAE; OR THE AUTHOR TO AURORA: 16 by WILLIAM BOSWORTH |