English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 465. Youth and Age |
| | | George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824) |
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| THERE’S not a joy the world can give like that it takes away | |
| When the glow of early thought declines in feeling’s dull decay; | |
| ’Tis not on youth’s smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast, | |
| But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past. | |
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| Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness | 5 |
| Are driven o’er the shoals of guilt, or ocean of excess: | |
| The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain | |
| The shore to which their shiver’d sail shall never stretch again. | |
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| Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself comes down; | |
| It cannot feel for others’ woes, it dare not dream its own; | 10 |
| That heavy chill has frozen o’er the fountain of our tears, | |
| And though the eye may sparkle still, ’tis where the ice appears. | |
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| Though wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast, | |
| Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest; | |
| ’Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruin’d turret wreathe, | 15 |
| All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and gray beneath. | |
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| O could I feel as I have felt, or be what I have been, | |
| Or weep as I could once have wept o’er many a vanish’d scene,— | |
| As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be, | |
| So midst the wither’d waste of life, those tears would flow to me! | 20 |
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