LXXXIV. To muse upon the past; life's early hope, Its aim, and failure, and despair, when found That chain our soul, still baffled, to the ground? LXXXV. Yet not of sorrow-he who life hath proved, Leaving the brow unwrinkled and unmoved: And thou wert happy; living, thou didst win Thy fame the quiet spot, in which begin And end our hopes, was thine; and though thy breast Poured forth its gratitude in this soft scene, Yet was not half thy happiness confessed; All the heart's finest chords die with us unexpressed! LXXXVI. Thy house is not thy tomb: the very place Transfused through mind for ever; what is death ?— To leave behind no trace; to hang no wreath Above our grave to tell who lived-loved-felt-beneath. LXXXVII. Nay, be such phantasies forgiven! yet who Can think of thee, nor feel, that, like a charm, Thy name, sweet HORACE ! doth those thoughts renew, And feelings which again our bosom warm, And of austerer moods of mind disarm : Who hath not sighed, in youth or age, to flee To the fond covert of thy Sabine farm? To share thy pride, thy manly dignity, The freeman's fearless spirit, aye, avowed by thee! LXXXVIII. Poet of human nature! to all ages Thou speakest, to all tongues, to every clime: Well didst thou match thy fame against all time, The life of ages dwelling on thy rhyme : The hope, the grief, the prayer, the jealous rack,— All thy own feelings share who walk our human track. LXXXIX. Who felt the nothingness of human life, Profoundly as thyself? for thou had'st tried All-both the solitude and social strife; Who hath so gently probed our weaker pride? Or given us moral armour to abide The strokes of fortune? who so well hath shown The wisdom to enjoy life's eventide, Gratefully, while the hour is yet our own, Ere life and time, the shades, from us, like thee, be flown? XC. "How much of time is lost in petty strife "Than noblest offices; thou Nurse severe "Thou bid'st me idly not of life complain, "But stamp upon the age my impress, not in vain." XCI. And where breathes Nature truer Oracles Than in thy depths, romantic Tivoli ! Here, where the Spirit of past ages dwells, Lulled by the Waters' Voice of prophecy ! Endiademed with craggy majesty, And plumed with woods that shed a horror round; From the profoundest chasm lift up thine eye! Lo-o'er yon far off points extremest bound, Abrupt, hung imminent against the blue profound, XCII. The Sibyl's temple stands, the earthly link That draws ye from those sunken depths to heaven, Based on the precipice's airy brink! The Arno rushes downward headlong driven O'er the crushed rocks in its wild pathway riven, In vain the flowers to catch thine eye have striven, Eye, sense, and soul absorbed, are fixed upon the spot, XCIII. Where that wrecked Image of the Beautiful The heart far more than language, though divine A venerable grace! which now appears more fair, |