Perseus With the Hesperides - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893. Excerpt: ... PERSEUS WITH THE HESPERIDES. 227 A cyclic round of seasons, infinite In variation, and unchangeable Alone in changeless constancy of Change, So runs the life of Man from birth to grave: Springtime of Youth, the childhood of the soul, Wide-eyed and wondering, green with wakening life: Summer of strenuous will, and ripening powers, Whose flushed exuberance of vitality Impels to effort and accomplishment,--Strong Summer, all too beautiful and fleet, Vocal with passion-breathing songs of Love, Nightingale-throated!--Autumn saddening o'er With dying flowers of Hope, and reddening leaves Of young ideals withering slowly down Beneath the frosts of Age and Apathy To barren disillusion, and the dearth Of half-achievement, lessening energies, And adverse Circumstance, which warp and crush The spirit that aforetime strongly dared Some noble work, but now stands idly by While feet less fleet, whose pathway to success It pioneered, surpass it in the race, And narrower brows receive the laurel crown:--Winter of sorrow and the desolate ache Of evanescence, loss and emptiness, When the once winge"d soul that scaled the skies Sinks heavily to earth with plumeless vans, Helpless and maimed,--perchance to rise no more, Perchance to flutter on despairingly With painful effort towards the distant goal, Dying at last on some lone Pisgah's height, With hopeless eyes fixed on the Promised Land. Sunshine and shade! Such is the history Of every soul of Man beneath the sun: A little shadow flecks the fairest sky, A little sunshine gilds the stormiest day,--Then evening, and the mystery of the night. "Tis sad to watch the death of happy days, Whose ever-lessening sands sink swiftly down, In sure remorseless sequence, one by one, Ere with the falling of the latest grain Time's fleshl...