Too calm to suffer pain, too living to forget,
And reaching down a succouring hand
To where the sufferers are,

To lift them to the tranquil heights afar,
Whereon Time's conquerors stand.

And when the precious hours are done,
How sweet at set of sun

To gather up the fair laborious day!—
To have struck some blow for right
With tongue or pen;

To have smoothed the path to light
For wandering men;

To have chased some fiend of Ill away;
A little backward to have thrust

The instant powers of Drink and Lust;
To have borne down Giant Despair;
To have dealt a blow at Care!

How sweet to light again the glow

Of warmer fires than youth's, tho' all the blood runs

slow!

Oh! is there any joy,

Of all that come to girl or boy

Or manhood's calmer weal and ease,

To vie with these?

Here is some fitting profit day by day,

Which none can render less;

Some glorious gain Fate cannot take away,

Nor Time depress.

Oh, brother, fainting on your road!

Poor sister, whom the righteous shun!

There comes for you, ere life and strength be done, An arm to bear your load.

A feeble body, maybe bent, and old,

But bearing 'midst the chills of age

A deeper glow than youth's; a nobler rage;

A calm heart yet not cold.

A man or woman, withered perhaps, and spent,
To whom pursuit of gold or fame

Is as a fire grown cold, an empty name,
Whom thoughts of Love no more allure
Who in a self-made nunnery dwell,

A cloistered calm and pure,

A beatific peace greater than tongue can tell.

And sweet it is to take,

With something of the eager haste of youth,
Some fainter glimpse of Truth

For its own sake;

To observe the ways of bee, or plant, or bird;
To trace in Nature the ineffable Word,

Which by the gradual wear of secular time,
Has worked its work sublime;

To have touched, with infinite gropings dim,
Nature's extremest outward rim;

To have found some weed or shell unknown before ;
To advance Thought's infinite march a footpace more;
To make or to declare laws just and sage;

These are the joys of Age.

Or by the evening hearth, in the old chair,
With children's children at our knees,

So like, yet so unlike the little ones of old-
Some little lad with curls of gold,

Some little maid demurely fair,
To sit, girt round with ease,
And feel how sweet it is to live,
Careless what fate may give;

To think, with gentle yearning mind,

Of dear souls who have crossed the Infinite Sea;
To muse with cheerful hope of what shall be

For those we leave behind

When the night comes which knows no earthly morn;

Yet mingled with the young in hopes and fears,
And bringing from the treasure-house of years
Some fair-set counsel long-time worn;

To let the riper days of life

The tumult and the strife,

Go by, and in their stead

Dwell with the living past, so living, yet so dead:

The mother's kiss upon the sleeper's brow,
The little fish caught from the brook,

The dead child-sister's gentle voice and look,
The school-days and the father's parting hand;
The days so far removed, yet oh! so near,

So full of precious memories dear;

The wonder of flying Time, so hard to understand!

Not in clear eye or ear

Dwells our chief profit here.

We are not as the brutes, who fade and make no

sign;

We are sustained where'er we go,

In happiness and woe,

By some indwelling faculty divine,
Which lifts us from the deep

Of failing senses, aye, and duller brain,

And wafts us back to youth again ;

And as a vision fair dividing sleep,

Pierces the vasts behind, the voids before,

And opens to us an invisible gate,

And sets our wingèd footsteps, scorning Time and

Fate,

At the celestial door.

RICHARD WATSON DIXON

Born 1833

SONG

The feathers of the willow
Are half of them grown yellow
Above the swelling stream;

And ragged are the bushes,
And rusty now the rushes,

And wild the clouded gleam.

The thistle now is older,
His stalk begins to moulder,

His head is white as snow;
The branches all are barer,
The linnet's song is rarer,

The robin pipeth now.