IN THE DECLINE OF LIFE.

The flower that blooms beneath the ray
Of summer's cloudless sky,
May see its blossoms torn away,
And yet not wholly die:
The summer sunbeams still are warm;
It dreads not winter's distant storm;
And heaven is bright on high:
It spreads its leaves each breeze to greet; —
Beauty is gone, but life is sweet.

It may not bloom again, — but still
Its leaf is green and bright;
Of evening's dew it drinks its fill,
And smiles in morning's light:
The bee may find no honey there;
But round its foliage, fresh and fair,
And lovely to the sight,
The butterfly on beauteous wing
Will hover, and for shelter cling.

Not so the flower which autumn's smile,
Instead of summer's blaze,
Seduces, by its specious wile,
To bloom in later days:
Scarce hath its opening blossom spread,
When all that charm'd it forth has fled;
It droops — and then decays!
Blasted in birth, its blight complete,
And winter's snow its winding-sheet.

How could it hope, the beam, which nursed
Its bud, would bless its bloom?
The languid rays which warm'd the first,
But mock'd the latter's doom:
Instead of genial shower and breeze,
Come rains that chill, and winds that freeze;
Instead of glory — gloom
How could it then but loathe to live,
When life had nothing left to give?

Thus fares it with the human mind,
Which Heaven has seem'd to bless
With a capacity to find
In friendship — happiness: —
Its earliest and its brightest years
Predict no pangs, forebode no fears;
No doubts awake distress:
Within it finds a cloudless sun,
Without, a friend in every one.

How soon ere youth itself be flown,
It learns that friends are few;
Yet fondly fancies still its own
Unchangeable, and true!
The spell is broken; and the breast
On which its hopes had loved to rest,
Is proved but human too;
And Disappointment's chilling blight
Strikes its first blossom of delight.

But if that blow be struck when life
Is young, and hopes are high,
Passion will yet maintain the strife,
Though pain extort the sigh:
The heart, though wounded, still can beat
With something of its earlier heat,
And feels too young to die;
It may not with first rapture thrill,
But better feelings haunt it still.

Not so, if in life's after hours,
The autumn of our day,
While yet we feel our mental powers
Unconscious of decay; —
If then confiding in the truth
Of love that looks as fresh as youth,
We see it fall away, —
It brings a desolating grief,
That withers more than flower or leaf!