A LOST PATH.

Alas, the path is lost, we cannot leave

Our bright, our clouded life, and pass away

As through strewn clouds, that stain the quiet eve,

To heights remoter of the purer day.

The soul may not, returning whence she came,

Bathe herself deep in Being, and forget

The joys that fever, and the cares that fret,

Made once more one with the eternal flame

That breathes in all things ever more the same.

She would be young again, thus drinking deep

Of her old life; and this has been, men say,

But this we know not, who have only sleep

To soothe us, sleep more terrible than day,

Where dead delights, and fair lost faces stray,

To make us weary at our wakening;

And of that long lost path to the Divine

We dream, as some Greek shepherd erst might sing,

Half credulous, of easy Proserpine,

And of the lands that lie‘ beneath the day's decline.’