VII.

THE HERMIT.

Years fly; beneath the yew-tree shade Thy father's holy dust is laid; The brook glides on, the jasmine blows; But where art thou, the wandering wife, And what the bliss, and what the woes, Glass'd in the mirror-sleep of life? For whether life may laugh or weep, Death the true waking--life the sleep. None know! afar, unheard, unseen-- The present heeds not what has been; This herded world together press'd, Can miss no straggler from the rest-- Not so! Nay, all _one_ heart may find, Where Memory lives, a saint enshrined-- Some altar-hearth, in which our shade The Household-god of Thought is made, And each slight relic hoarded yet With faith more solemn than regret. Who tenants thy forsaken cot-- Who tends thy childhood's favourite flowers-- Who wakes, from every haunted spot, The Ghosts of buried Hours? 'Tis He whose sense was doom'd to borrow From thee the Vision and the Sorrow-- To whom the Reason's golden ray, In storms that rent the heart was given; The peal that burst the clouds away Left clear the face of heaven! And wealth was his, and gentle birth, A form in fair proportions cast; But lonely still he walk'd the earth-- The Hermit of the Past. It was not love--that dream was o'er! No stormy grief, no wild emotion; For oft, what once was love of yore, The memory soothes into devotion! He bought the cot:--The garden flowers-- The haunts his Eva's steps had trod, Books--thought--beguiled the lonely hours, That flow'd in peaceful waves to God.