Poetical Fragments from Ethel Churchill Volume II/What is Success?

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2476728Poetical Fragments from Ethel Churchill, Volume II — What is Success?Letitia Elizabeth Landon

CHAPTER X.


SUCCESS.


All things are symbols; and we find
    In morning's lovely prime,
The actual history of the mind
    In its own early time:
So, to the youthful poet's gaze,
    A thousand colours rise,—
The beautiful which soon decays,
    The buoyant which soon dies.

So does not die their influence,
    The spirit owns the spell;
Memory to him is music—hence
    The magic of his shell.
He sings of general hopes and fears—
    A universal tone;
All weep with him, for in his tears
    They recognise their own.

Yet many a one, whose lute hangs now
    High on the laurel tree,
Feels that the cypress' dark bough
    A fitter meed would be:
And still with weariness and wo
    The fatal gift is won;
Many a radiant head lies low,
    Ere half its race be run.



Blanchard’s title is:

WHAT IS SUCCESS?


Adapted from Introduction, Fisher’s Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1835