The Poetical Works of William Motherwell/The Past and the Future
The Past and the Future.
I've looked, and trusted, sighed, and loved my last!
The dream hath vanished, the hot fever's past
That parched my youth!
Though cheerless was the matin of my years,
And dim life's dawning through a vale of tears,
Yet Hope, in ruth,
With smile persuasive, evermore would say—
'Live on, live on!—Expect Joy's summer day'—
Vain counsel, void of truth!
Yes, to the world Tve clung with fond embrace,
And each succeeding day did more efface
Its hollow joys,
And friends died out around me every where,
And I was left to be the idle stare
Of vagrant boys—
A land-mark on the ever-shifting tide
Of fashion, folly, impudence and pride,
And ribald noise.
Yes, I have lived, and lived until I knew
The world ne'er alters its ungrateful hue,
And glance malign;
And though, at times, some chance-sown noble spirit
Its wilderness a season may inherit,
In want and pine,
Yet these be weeded soon, and pass away,
All unbefriended, to their funeral clay!
Array thyself for flight, my soul, nor tarry—
Thou bird of glory ne'er wert doomed to marry
A sphere so rude—
But to be mated with some hermit star,
O'er heaven's soft azure keeping watch afar,
In pulchritude:
Uplift thy pinions, seek thy resting-place,
Where kindred spirits long for thy embrace—
Dear brotherhood.