Touch with electric wand thy loosen'd reins,
And speed thy axle o'er the azure plains?
While to the highest portal of the sky,*[1]
Whose glowing threshold mocks the dazzled eye,
Thou journeyest onward through the fields of air,
Our earthborn infants grow to men of care;
And ere to Capricorn, its frigid goal,
Thy flambeaux-lighted car is seen to roll,
A few survive, with wasted locks, and gray,—
The rest have slumber'd long in kindred clay.
Say,—do thy children thus, with scanty line,
Their seasons measure, and their graves define?
Or, like that race whom the dire deluge slew,
Through waning centuries their youth renew?
Content to hold, beneath a niggard ray,
Cold, passive, passionless, their lingering way?
Alas! how weak is reason's wildering chain!
How low we fall, from heights we seek to gain!
The lamp of Science, through the mists afar,
Fades like the sun upon the Georgian star;
We gaze and boast! yet scarce can turn about
Ere the brief hour-glass of our time is out!
We sink to rest, with those who went before,
Lost like the grains of sand on Ocean's boundless shore.
"AS THY DAY, SO SHALL THY STRENGTH BE."
Deuteronomy, xxxiii. 25.
When adverse winds and waves arise,
And in my heart despondence sighs,
- ↑ * The ancient Egyptians used to call the sign Cancer, "the highest gate of Heaven."
