I.

On Avon's stream, in day's declining hours, The loitering Angler sees reflected towers; Adown the hill the stately shadows glide, And force their frown upon the gentle tide: Another shade, as stately and as slow, Steals down the slope and dims the peace below: There, side by side, your noiseless shadows fall, Time-wearied Lord, and time-defying hall! As Song's sweet Master fled the roar of Rome, For the Bandusian fount and Sabine home, A soul forsook the beaten tracks of life, Sought the lone bye-path and escaped the strife; And paused, reviving 'mid the haunts of youth, To conjure fancies back, or muse on truth. One home there is, from which, howe'er we stray, True as a star, the smile pursues our way; The home of thoughtful childhood's mystic tears, Of earliest Sabbath bells on sinless ears, Of noonday dreamings under summer trees, And prayers first murmur'd at a mother's knees. Ah! happy he, whose later home as man Is made where Love first spoke, and Hope began, Where haunted floors dear footsteps back can give, And in our Lares all our fathers live!

Graced with those gifts the vulgar mostly prize, And if used wisely, precious to the wise, Wealth and high lineage;--Ruthven's name was known Less for ancestral greatness than its own: With boyhood's dreams the grand desire began Which, nerved by labour, lifts _from_ rank the man Ev'n as the eye in Art's majestic halls Not on the frame but on the portrait falls; So to each nobler life the gaze we bound, Nor heed what casework clasps the picture round.

But who can guess that crisis of the soul When the old glory first forsakes the goal? When Knowledge halts and sees but cloud before; When sour'd Experience whispers 'hope no more;' When every onward footstep from our side Parts the slow friend or hesitating guide; When envy rots the harvest in the sheaf; When faith in virtue seems the child's belief; And life's last music sighs itself away On some false lip, that kiss'd but to betray? Thus from a world that wrong'd him, self-exiled, The man resought the birthplace of the child. Rest comes betimes, if toil commence too soon; The brightest sun is stillest at the noon; Weary at mid-day, genius halts the course, And hails the respite which renews the force.