In a few more years would show some hoar lock,
And that Time, though leisurely, never tarried,
He wisely took him by the forelock:
—In short, he married.

Oh, perfect rest! oh, dulcet ease!
As of a ship that finds some haven,
By still, translucent waters paven,
After the weary, wandering seas!
Oh, nest beneath the dark pine trees,
In the smile of its own whiteness sleeping,
Where the clangour of the festive bees
Answers the branchy chorus sweeping
From bough to bough when the winds are out;
Oh, swift cascades that dance and shout
Down the sides of the carv'd and glittering peaks
Of the mountains, steady, and great and calm;
Looking up at the sky with wet, gray cheeks
How your healing influence bathed in balm
The mind that was sear'd and scorch'd with longing!
Better it was than wisest books;
And it was bliss to see the brooks
For ever along the valley thronging,
And the kine at feed in the placid meadows,
Dumbly feeding above their shadows,
And the birds with their wild and rapid looks
Leaping in and out of the leaves,
As they sprinkled the air with a musical rain,
And the doves that around the weather-vane
Flash'd on their white angelical wings,
And the heavy-headed, sustaining sheaves,
Like the dark earth's golden kings.
—Walter, within his soul's white morn,
Saw vast Nature newly born;
For when the jaded brain receives
Celestial light and fire, all things
Put forth fresh buds and infant shoots
Up from their old, eternal roots,
And this gray, wrinkled world is seen
As at the First it may have been,
Lying, all young, and soft and tender,
In the arms of th' enfolding Heaven,
Unmingled with that bitter leaven,
Which the successive ages render.

But the stream of Time is always gliding,
And the fairest things are least abiding.
—It's said (and I think there's a great deal of truth in it),
That some cross-grain'd folks are apt to mutter
And make wry mouths at their bread and butter,
Unwisely refusing to set a tooth in it,
Because they think it not good enough
For their worshipful stomachs—or some such stuff.
Thus, Walter, having lived in bliss
A year or two, began to miss
His former travels in prosecution
Of the golden secret's grand solution ;
And, turning again his addled brain
To the old vexation, toil, and pain,
(Though more for the glory than the pelf,)
He thought like a fool within himself,
That, by a sacred obligation,
He must forsake all human ties,
To fulfil the Spirit's revelation,
And aid the world's high destinies.
And so, in the gray of a summer morning,
Without the least farewell or warning,
He crept away with a stealthy tread,
And a cruel devil in heart and head—
Crept away like a thief that feels
His conscience dogging at his heels—
Crept away from the soft inclosing
Of th' arms where he had lain reposing—
Crept awhile, then swiftly ran
Into the outer world of man.

'Twould be a tedious task, and bootless,
For me to give or you to hear a
Full record of his efforts fruitless
In seeking for that vain chimera;—
The restless toil, the fierce consuming,
The fret, the fever, and the fuming—
The haggard nights, dream-curst and eager,
The days that found him pale and meagre—
Fighting for aye a ghastly fight
Against Despair by a baleful light
Of hope that seem'd itself despairing!
But at length (when the choice was calm, or madness)
His mind, like a taper spent with flaring,
Lay down on the edge of darkness faintly;
And over the darkness and the sadness
Came a visage sad and saintly,—
Sad and saintly and bright and lonely,—
Bright and lonely as an only
Star in heaven when heaven is shrouded;
And, in a vast and mighty anguish,
He felt his very bones to languish,
And his soul to thirst with an infinite thirsting
(As men for air when over-crowded)
For the face that he had left to sorrow.
His heart with remorse and shatne was bursting;
And he vow'd in his weeping that on the morrow
He would seek his home and beg for grace.

And when once more he reach'd the place
He found the cottage closed and dusty,
With crumbling doors and iron rusty,
That scarcely withstood the stinging sabres
Of the weeds that clomb with dull exertion.
On a sudden, his tongue grew parch'd and fiery:
Stumbling and wild, he sought the neighbours,
Who turn'd away with cold aversion;
And, in reply to his inquiry,
With murderous shortness only said—
"Dead!"

And through his grief's transcendant night—
Too late, too late!—he saw the light,
And understood the consummation
Of the Spirit's typical revelation.
Oh, he had once held Life's chief Treasure,
The bliss that knows not stint nor measure!
He had attain'd the high communion
Of soul with soul in mystical union,
And had lost that boon of Heaven's sending
In casting aside its great befriending.
Therefore his few remaining years
He sow'd with salt and barren tears,
And wander'd about with hair all gray,
Gazing like one who had lost his way
By night in a desert cold and wide:
And ever he pray'd for his latest breath
That so at length he might regain
Her dear embrace in that domain
Which shines like a sun on the other side
Of the dark and rapid river of Death

And that's the Tale.
If you ask me what it may avail?
I answer, it shows that when we're blest
With a gift of Heaven's own bequest,
We must learn to prize and understand it,
And be thankful to Him who wrought and plann'd it,