e with wonder,
His eyes are so like my own.

I see him next in his chamber,
Where he sits him down to write
The rhymes he framed in his ramble,
And he cons them with delight.

A kindly figure enters,
A man of middle age,
And points to a line just written,
And 'tis blotted from the page.

And next, in a hall of justice,
Scarce grown to manly years,
Mid the hoary-headed wranglers
The slender youth appears.

With a beating heart he rises,
And with a burning cheek,
And the judges kindly listen
To hear the young man speak.

Another change, and I see him
Approach his dwelling-place,
Where a fair-haired woman meets him,
With a smile on her young face--

A smile that spreads a sunshine
On lip and cheek and brow;
So sweet a smile there is not
In all the wide earth now.

She leads by the hand their first-born,
A fair-haired little one,
And their eyes as they meet him sparkle
Like brooks in the morning sun.

Another change, and I see him
Where the city's ceaseless coil
Sends up a mighty murmur
From a thousand modes of toil.

And there, mid the clash of presses,
He plies the rapid pen
In the battles of opinion,
That divide the sons of men.

I look, and the clashing presses
And the town are seen no more,
But there is the poet wandering
A strange and foreign shore.

He has crossed the mighty ocean
To realms that lie afar,
In the region of ancient story,
Beneath the morning star.

And now he stands in wonder
On an icy Alpine height;
Now pitches his tent in the desert
Where the jackal yells at night;

Now, far on the North Sea islands,
Sees day on the midnight sky,
Now gathers the fair strange fruitage
Where the isles of the Southland lie.

I see him again at his dwelling,
Where, over the little lake,
The rose-trees droop in their beauty
To meet the image they make.

Though years have whitened his temples,
His eyes have the first look still,
Save a shade of settled sadness,
A forecast of coming ill.

For in that pleasant dwelling,
On the rack of ceaseless pain,
Lies she who smiled so sweetly,
And prays for ease in vain.

And I know that his heart is breaking,
When, over those dear eyes,
The darkness slowly gathers,
And the loved and loving dies.

A grave is scooped on the hillsid