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In Youth
MILTON, our noblest poet, in the grace | |
| Of youth, in those fair eyes and clustering hair, | |
| That brow untouched by one faint line of care | |
| To mar its openness, we seem to trace | |
| The front of the first lord of human race, | 5 |
| Mid thine own paradise portrayed so fair, | |
| Ere sin or sorrow scathed it: such the air | |
| That characters thy youth. Shall time efface | |
| These lineaments as crowding cares assail! | |
| It is the lot of fallen humanity. | 10 |
| What boots it! armed in adamantine mail, | |
| The unconquerable mind and genius high | |
| Right onward hold their way through weal and woe, | |
| Or whether life’s brief lot be high or low! | |
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In Age
And art thou he, now “fallen on evil days,” | 15 |
| And changed indeed! Yet what do this sunk cheek, | |
| These thinner locks, and that calm forehead speak? | |
| A spirit reckless of man’s blame or praise,— | |
| A spirit, when thine eyes to the noon’s blaze | |
| Their dark orbs roll in vain, in suffering meek, | 20 |
| As in the sight of God intent to seek, | |
| Mid solitude or age, or through the ways | |
| Of hard adversity, the approving look | |
| Of its great Master; whilst the conscious pride | |
| Of wisdom, patient and content to brook | 25 |
| All ills to that sole Master’s task applied, | |
| Shall show before high Heaven the unaltered mind, | |
| Milton, though thou art poor, and old, and blind! | |
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