XXII

A form all changed, the storm and wreck escaped, with weeds defaced;
Who walks with thoughtful steps and slow along the evening waste,
On life's strand standing lonely, like the exiled ghost of yore,
Sighing in vain his soul toward lost youth's delicious shore.

XXIII

Yet what art thou, so changed, but child of that departed youth?
Now knowing good and evil in the knowledge-fruit of truth;
Then slave to passionate impulse, thou, and error; now sublime
Thou lookest from earth's shoal beyond the bounds of space and time.

XXIV

Thou wast the sapling of this trunk that must in age decay;
Seed shed in blossom, morning's orient toned to twilight grey;
The child of a departed youth, thou, child-like still, wouldst claim
The wreath of memory o'er thy dust, a record and a name.

XXV

I rise and pace the desert heath, but with a firmer tread;
I cast depression to the winds, and heavenward raise my head:
I feel the work of life is wrought whose pledge my soul controlled,
To read the book of Nature and the heart of man unrolled.

XXVI

A calmer feeling rises, a repose, and grateful love
To the Spirit that dwells in me, and around; that from above
My bosom fills with gladness, with the silent joy I see
In solemn faces of the clouds, in leaf, and flower, and tree;

XXVII

That tells me I am blended with the life divine revealed
In Nature, with the thought of God upon her forehead sealed;
The veneration, faith and love, the triad, ray-like drawn
From Him, the ever-living One, that saw creation born.

XXVIII

Grey earth shall pass, tongues be forgot, fame's records sink in dust,
And in oblivion's scrolls be lost the good, the great, the just;
But the soul freed its mortal coil, the bonds of time shall sever,
And dwell a consciousness apart in deathless life for ever.