Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed For ever piping songs for ever new; For ever panting, and for ever young; Who are these coming to the sacrifice? Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,'—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. J. Keats CCCXXIX YOUTH AND AGE Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying, When I was young?-Ah, woful when! Nought cared this body for wind or weather Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like; Friendship is a sheltering tree; O! the joys, that came down shower-like, Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty, Ere I was old! Ere I was old? Ah woful Ere, Which tells me, Youth's no longer here! Dew-drops are the gems of morning, -That only serves to make us grieve S. T. Coleridge CCCXXX THE TWO APRIL MORNINGS We walk'd along, while bright and red And Matthew stopp'd, he look'd, and said "The will of God be done!' A village schoolmaster was he, With hair of glittering gray; As blithe a man as you could see And on that morning, through the grass And by the steaming rills We travell'd merrily, to pass A day among the hills. 'Our work,' said I, 'was well begun ; Then, from thy breast what thought, Beneath so beautiful a sun, So sad a sigh has brought?' A second time did Matthew stop; Upon the eastern mountain-top, 'Yon cloud with that long purple cleft A day like this, which I have left 'And just above yon slope of corn 'With rod and line I sued the sport Which that sweet season gave, And to the church-yard come, stopp'd short Beside my daughter's grave. 'Nine summers had she scarcely seen, The pride of all the vale; And then she sang,-she would have been A very nightingale. 'Six feet in earth my Emma lay; For so it seem'd,-than till that day 'And turning from her grave, I met, A blooming Girl, whose hair was wet 'A basket on her head she bare; To see a child so very fair, It was a pure delight! 'No fountain from its rocky cave 'There came from me a sigh of pain I look'd at her, and look'd again : -Matthew is in his grave, yet now As at that moment, with a bough IV. Wordsworth CCCXXXI THE FOUNTAIN A Conversation We talk'd with open heart, and tongue Affectionate and true, A pair of friends, though I was young, And Matthew seventy-two. We lay beneath a spreading oak, Beside a mossy seat; And from the turf a fountain broke And gurgled at our feet. 'Now, Matthew!' said I, 'let us match This water's pleasant tune With some old border-song, or catch That suits a summer's noon; 'Or of the church-clock and the chimes Sing here beneath the shade That half-mad thing of witty rhymes Which you last April made! In silence Matthew lay, and eyed The spring beneath the tree; And thus the dear old man replied, The gray-hair'd man of glee : 'No check, no stay, this Streamlet fears, How merrily it goes! 'Twill murmur on a thousand years And flow as now it flows. |