VAILIMA.

Blame me not that this epistle

Is the first you have from me;

Idleness hath held me fettered;

But at last the times are bettered,

And once more I wet my whistle

Here in France beside the sea.

All the green and idle weather,

I have had in sun and shower

Such an easy, warm subsistence,

Such an indolent existence,

I should find it hard to sever

Day from day and hour from hour.

Many a tract-provided ranter

May upbraid me, dark and sour,

Many a bland Utilitarian,

Or excited Millenarian,

— “Pereunt et imputantur” —

You must speak to every hour.

But ( the very term's deception )

You at least, my Friend, will see

That in sunny grassy meadows,

Trailed across by moving shadows,

To be actively receptive

Is as much as man can be.

He that all the winter grapples

Difficulties — thrust and ward —

Needs to cheer him thro’ his duty

Memories of sun and beauty,

Orchards with the russet apples

Lying scattered on the sward.

Many such I keep in prison,

Keep them here at heart unseen,

Till my muse again rehearses

Long years hence, and in my verses

You shall meet them re-arisen,

Ever comely, ever green.

You know how they never perish,

How, in time of later art,

Memories consecrate and sweeten

Those defaced and tempest-beaten

Flowers of former years we cherish

Half a life, against our heart.

Most, those love-fruits withered greenly,

Those frail, sickly amourettes,—

How they brighten with the distance,

Take new strength and new existence,

Till we see them sitting queenly

Crowned and courted by regrets!

All that loveliest and best is,

Aureole-fashion round their head,

They that looked in life but plainly,

How they stir our spirits vainly

When they come to us, Alcestis —

Like returning from the dead!

Not the old love but another,

Bright she comes at memory's call,

Our forgotten vows reviving

To a newer, livelier living,

As the dead child to the mother

Seems the fairest child of all.

Thus our Goethe, sacred master,

Travelling backward thro’ his youth,

Surely wandered wrong in trying

To renew the old, undying

Loves that cling in memory faster

Than they ever lived in truth.