THE YOUTH OF THOUGHT by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907)

OH happy days! oh joyous time!
When thought was gay and man was young,
And to a golden flow of rhyme,
Life like a melody was sung;

When, in the springtime of the earth,
The cloud-capt hill, the dewy grove,
Clear lake and rippling stream gave birth
To shy Divinities of love;

When often to the jovial feast
Of love or wine the people came,
And Nature was the only priest,
And Youth and Pleasure knew not shame.

Nor darker shape of wrong or ill
The fearful fancy might inspire,
Than vine-crowned on some shady hill,
The Satyr nursing quaint desire.

And if some blooming youth or maid
In depths of wood or stream were lost,
Some love-lorn Deity, 'twas said,
The blissful truant's path had crossed.

Sweet time of fancy, giving place
To times of thinking scarce less blest,
When Wisdom wore a smiling face,
And Knowledge was like Fancy drest,

And Art with Language lived ingrown,
The cunning hand and golden tongue:
By this the form Divine was shown,
By that its deathless praises sung.

When in cool temples fair and white,
By purple sea, or myrtle shade,
The gods took shape to mortal sight,
By their own creatures' hands remade.

And daily, to the cheerful noise
Of wrestling, or the panting race --
Mid the clear laughter of the boys,
And tender forms of youthful grace --

Grave sages walked in high debate
Beneath the laurel grove, and sought
To solve the mysteries of Fate,
And sound the lowest deeps of Thought;

Nor knew that they, as those indeed,
Were naked, taking fair for right;
With beauty only for all creed,
Yet not without some heaven-sent light.

Now preaching clear the deathless soul;
Now winging love from sloughs of shame;
And oft from earthly vapours foul,
Soaring aloft with tongues of flame.

Knew they no inward voice to vex
The careless joyance of their way --
No pointing finger stern, which checks
The sad transgressor of to-day?

Fair dream, if any dream be fair,
Which knows no fuller life than thine;
Which only moves through earthly air,
And builds on shadows half divine;

How art thou fled! For us no more
Dryad or Satyr haunts the grove;
No Nereid sports upon the shore,
Nor with wreathed horn the Tritons rove;

Who breathe a fuller, graver air,
Long since to manhood's stature grown;
Who leave our childhood's fancies fair,
For pains and pleasures of our own.

For us no more the young vine climbs,
Its gadding tendrils flinging down;
Who move in sadder, wiser times,
Whose thorns are woven for a crown.

The lily and the passion-flower
Preach a new tale of gain and loss,
And in the wood-nymph's closest bower
The springing branches form the Cross.

"A great hope traversing the earth,"
Has taken all the young world's bloom,
And for the joy and flush of birth,
Has left the solemn thought of doom;

And made the body no more divine,
And built our Heaven no longer here,
And given for joyous fancies fine,
Souls bowed with holy awe and fear.

And far beyond the suns, removed
The godhead seen by younger eyes,
Leaving the people once beloved,
Girt round by dreadful mysteries;

Fulfilled with thoughts, more fair and dear
Than all the lighter joys of yore,
Immeasurable hopes brought near,
And Heaven laid open more and more.

But not with love and peace alone
Time came, which older joys could take;
But with fierce brand and hopeless groan,
Red war, the dungeon, and the stake;

And lives by Heaven too much opprest,
And cloisters dim with tears and sighs,
And young hearts withered in the breast,
And fasts and stripes and agonies;

And for Apollo breathing strength,
And Aphrodite warm with life;
A tortured Martyr come at length,
To the last pang of lifelong strife.

While round us daily move no more
Those perfect forms of youthful grace,
No more men worship as before
The rounded limb, the clear-cut face;

Who see the dwarfed mechanic creep,
With hollow cheek, and lungs that bleed,
Or the swart savage fathom-deep,
Who comes to air, to sleep, and breed.

Aye, but by loom, or forge, or mine,
Or squalid hut, there breaks for these
Hope more immense, awe more divine
Than ever dawned on Sokrates.

Who if they seek to live again
In careless lives the pagan charm,
May only prove a lifelong pain,
For that clear conscience void of harm.

For in the manhood of God's days
We live, and not in careless youth;
The essence more than form we praise,
And Beauty moves us less than Truth.

From youth to age; till cycles hence
Another and a higher Spring,
And with a truer innocence,
Again the world shall think and sing.

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