- MAN hath a weary pilgrimage
- As through the world he wends;
- On every stage from youth to age
- Still discontent attends;
- With heaviness he casts his eye
- Upon the road before,
- And still remembers, with a sigh,
- The days that are no more.
- To school the little exile goes
- Torn from his mother's arms;
- What then shall sooth his earliest woes,
- When novelty hath lost its charms?
- Condemn'd to suffer through the day
- Restraints which no rewards repay,
- And cares where love has no concern,
- Hope lengthens as she counts the hours,
- Before his wish'd return.
- From hard control and tyrant rules,
- The unfeeling discipline of schools,
- In thought he loves to roam,
- And tears will struggle in his eye
- While he remembers with a sigh
- The comforts of his home.
- Youth comes; the toils and cares of life
- Torment the restless mind;
- Where shall the tired and harass'd heart
- Its consolation find?
- Then is not youth, as fancy tells,
- Life's summer prime of joy?
- Ah no! for hopes too long delay'd,
- And feelings blasted or betray'd,
- The fabled bliss destroy;
- And youth remembers with a sigh
- The careless days of infancy.
- Maturer manhood now arrives,
- And other thoughts come on,
- But with the baseless hopes of youth
- Its generous warmth is gone;
- Cold calculating cares succeed,
- The timid thought, the wary deed,
- The dull realities of truth;
- Back on the past he turns his eye,
- Remembering with an envious sigh
- The happy dreams of youth.
- So reaches he the later stage
- Of this our mortal pilgrimage,
- With feeble step and slow;
- New ills that later stage await,
- And old experience learns too late
- That all is vanity below.
- Life's vain delusions are gone by,
- its idle hopes are o'er,
- Yet age remembers with a sigh
- The days that are no more.
SOUTHEY.
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