Landon in The Literary Gazette 1832/Youth
10
Literary Gazette, 11th August, 1832, Page 508
ORIGINAL POETRY.
YOUTH.
And herein have the green trees and the blossoming shrubs their advantage over us: the flower withers and the leaf falls, but the fertilising sap still lingers in their veins, and the following years bring again a spring of promise and a summer of beauty: but we, when our leaves and flowers perish, they perish utterly; we put forth no new hopes, we dream no new dreams. Why are we not wise enough, at least more preciously to retain their memory?
Oh! the hours! the happy hours
Of our other earlier time,
When the world was full of flowers,
And the sky a summer clime!
All life seem'd so lovely then;
For it mirror'd our own heart:
Life is only joyful when
That joy of ourselves is part.
Fond delight and kind deceit
Are the gladness of the young—
For the bloom beneath our feet
Is what we ourselves have flung.
Then so many pleasures seem
Scatter'd o'er our onward way;
'Tis so difficult to deem
How their relish will decay.
What the heart now beats to win
Soon will be unloved, unsought:
Gradual is the change within,
But an utter change is wrought.
Time goes on, and time destroys
Not the joy, but our delight:
Do we now desire the toys
Which so charm'd our childhood's sight?
Glory, poetry, and love,
Make youth beautiful, and pass
As the hues that shine above
Colour, but to quit, their glass.
But we soon grow calm and cold
As the grave to which we go;
Fashion'd in one common mould,
Pulse and step alike are slow.
We have lost the buoyant foot—
We have lost the eager eye;
All those inward chords are mute,
Once so eager to reply.
Is it not a constant sight—
Is it not most wretched too—
When we mark the weary plight
In which life is hurried through?
Selfish, listless, Earth may wear
All her summer wealth in vain—
Though the stars be still as fair,
Yet we watch them not again.
Too much do we leave behind
Sympathy with lovely things;
And the worn and worldly mind
Withers all life's fairy rings.
Glorious and beautiful
Were youth's feeling and youth's thought—
Would that we did not annul
All that in us then was wrought!
Would their influence could remain
When the hope and dream depart;
Would we might through life retain
Still some youth within the heart!
L. E. L.