pe like a blossoming rose,
When the wine-blood of youth ran tingling and throbbing in every vein;
Chirrup of robin and blue-bird in the white-blossomed apple and pear;
Carpets of green on the meadows spangled with dandelions;
Lowing of kine in the valleys, bleating of lambs on the hills;
Babble of brooks and the prattle of fountains that flashed in the sun;
Glad, merry voices, ripples of laughter, snatches of music and song,
And blue-eyed girls in the gardens that blushed like the roses they wore.

And life was a pleasure unvexed, unmingled with sorrow and pain?
A round of delight from the blink of morn
till the moon rose laughing at night?
Nay, there were cares and cankers--envy and hunger and hate;
Death and disease in the pith of the limbs,
in the root and the bud and the branch;
Dry-rot, alas, at the heart, and a canker-worm gnawing therein.

The summer of life came on with its heat and its struggle and toil,
Sweat of the brow and the soul, throbbing of muscle and brain,
Toil and moil and grapple with Fortune clutched as she flew--
Only a shred of her robe, and a brave heart baffled and bowed!
Stern-visaged Fate with a hand of iron uplifted to fell;
The secret stab of a friend that stung like the sting of an asp,
Wringing red drops from the soul and a stifled moan of despair;
The loose lips of gossip and then--a storm of slander and lies,
Till Justice was blind as a bat and deaf to the cries of the just,
And Mercy, wrapped up in her robe, stood by like a statue in stone.

Sear autumn followed the summer with frost and the falling of leaves
And red-ripe apples that blushed on the hills in the orchard of peace:
Red-ripe apples, alas, with worms writhing down to the core,
Apples of ashes and fungus that fell into rot at a touch;
Clusters of grapes in the garden blighted and sour on the vines;
Wheat-fields that waved in the valley and promised a harvest of gold,
Thrashing but chaff and weevil or cockle and shriveled cheat.
Fair was the promise of spring-time; the harvest a harvest of lies:
Fair was the promise of summer with Fortune clutched by the robe;
Fair was the promise of autumn--a hollow harlot in red,
A withered rose at her girdle and the thorns of the rose in her hand.

Down into the darkness at last, Daniel,--down into the darkness at last;
Laid in the lap of our Mother, Daniel, sleeping the dreamless sleep--
Sleeping the sleep of the babe unborn--the pure and the perfect rest:
Aye, a