lot is cast in ages of decay,Who watch a waning light, an ebbing tide,
Decline of energy and fall of pride,
Old glories disappearing unreplaced,
Receding culture and encroaching waste,
Art grown pedantic, manners waxing coarse,
The good thing still succeeded by the worse.
We see not what those latest Romans saw,
When o’er Italian cities, Latin law,
Greek beauty, swept the barbarizing tide,
And all fair things in slow succession died.
’Tis much that such defeat and blank despair,
Whate’er our trials, ’tis not ours to bear,
Much that the mass of foul abuse grows less,
Much that the injured have sometimes redress,
Wealth grows less haughty, misery less resigned,
That policy grows just, religion kind,
That all worst things towards some better tend,
And long endurance nears at last its end;
The ponderous cloud grows thin and pierced with bright,
And its wild edge is fused in blinding light.
Yet disappointment still with hope appears,
And with desires that strengthen, strengthen fears,
’Tis the swift-sailing ship that dreads the rocks,
The active foot must ’ware of stumbling-blocks.
Alas! along the way towards social good,
How many stones of dire offence lie strew’d.
Whence frequent failure, many shrewd mishaps
And dismal pause or helpless backward lapse.
Such was the hard reverse that Milton mourn’d,
An old man, when he saw the King returned
With right divine, and that fantastic train
Of banished fopperies come back again.
Thus France, too wildly clutching happiness.
Stumbled perplexed, and paid in long distress,
In carnage, where the bloody conduit runs,
And one whole generation of her sons
Devoted to the Power of Fratricide
For one great year, one eager onward stride.
From all these stumbling-blocks that strew the way
What wisest cautions may ensure us, say.
Cling to the present good with steadfast grip,
And for no fancied better let it slip,
Whether thy fancy in the future live
Or yearn to make the buried past revive.
The past is dead, – let the dead have his dues,
Remembrance of historian and of Muse;
But try no lawless magic on the urn,
It shocks to see the brightest past return.
Some good things linger when their date is fled,
These honour as you do the hoary head,
And treat them tenderly for what they were,
But dream not to detain them always there.
The living good the present moments bring
To this devote thyself and chiefly cling;
And for the novel schemes that round thee rise,
Watch them with hopeful and indulgent eyes,
Treat them as children, love them, mark their ways,
And blame their faults and dole out cautious praise,
And give them space, yet limit them with rule,
And hold them down and keep them long at school:
Yet know in these is life most fresh and strong,
And that to these at last shall all belong.
Be proved and present good thy safe-guard still,
And thy one quarrel be with present ill.
Learn by degrees a steady onward stride
With sleepless circumspection for thy guide.
And since so thick the stumbling-blocks are placed,
You are not safe but in renouncing haste;
Permit not so your zeal to be repressed,
But make the loss up by renouncing rest.
WITCHCRAFT
I SPOSE ’tis I – and yet, so strange
I feel, I doubt if I’m all right.
Only since Tuesday last this change,
And this is Friday night.
On Monday, life was very drear,
My missus was so cross,
’Cos how I’d spilt a jug of beer —
She, who calls money dross.
She thinks herself a very saint,
‘Cos she reads prayers to us;
But Sal the cook, and I, we ain’t
Imposed on by her fuss.
’Tis not the prayers I think is bad,
But those who are so good
Should act as if they feelings had
Towards we – who are flesh and blood.
But now if missus ’gins to scold
I do not care a straw,
For Tom, on Tuesday morning, told
Me not to mind her jaw.
I now can dance, and laugh, and sing,
Altho’ I work all day.
Surely it is a funny thing,
I’m all at once so gay.
All ’cos Tom’s in love with me,
And I’m sure he says what’s true.
He says love’s a mystery
Which in Eden’s garden grew.
I call love witchcraft, that I do;
It’s made me quite another;
Instead of being Mary Roe,
I may be any other.
Missus thinks I’m going mad,
I work with such good glee;
’Tis only that my heart is glad
’Cos Tom’s in love with me.
I wish some man would missus love;
She might be kinder then.
She says her ’fections are above,
’Cos sinful are all men.
If she but had the chance, I b’lieve,
She’d ’cept the first with glee,
And would not any longer grieve
O’er man’s depravity.
She’d be as different as
