The sun shines dull in the mist amid,
That, like a grief, is shading him;
And though the mountains be not hid,
Their distant blue is faint and dim,
Yet marking with their outline deep
The paler blue that bends above.
The winds have moaned themselves to sleep,
And scarcely now their soft wings move,
With an unquiet, slumberous motion,
Watched by the pale, mute, flitting Noon,—
That wanderer of Earth and Ocean,
Whose stay all men desire, but none obtain the boon.

It is the hour for saddened thought,
When all things have a softened tone,—
A dream-like indistinctness, fraught
With all that makes man feel alone.
Perhaps the hour and time it is,
That in the sad and dreaming heart
Make gray Time's ancient images
Into a new distinctness start;
Till all that I have lost or left,
Or loved or worshipped in my youth,
Comes up like an unwelcome gift,
With all the sad and stern reality of truth.

The troubled image of the Past,
Its buried years, before me rise;
And gazing in the distant vast,
Dim shapes I see, with saddened eyes,
Like those that I have known before,
But altered, as I, too, have changed:
Many that near my heart I wore,
Some long ago from me enstranged.
Ah! yes! I know that sad fair face,
That matchless form, that witchery,
Thy step of air, thy winning grace,—
I see thee, loved one! in the dim obscurity.

Fair Fancy, Memory's sister, weaves
No golden web of hope for me,
Or, if she smile, she still deceives
With all a wanton's mockery;—
She points me to a fireless hearth,
And,—that most sharp and bitter sting,
We feel upon the lonely earth,—
Cold looks and colder welcoming:
Friends washed off by life's ebbing tide,
Like sands along the shifting coasts,
The soul's first love another's bride;
And other melancholy thoughts that haunt like ghosts.

Well, I have chosen my own rough way,
And I will walk it manfully;
And do the best that mortal may,
Wherever duty leadeth me.
No heart that is not wholly cold,
Can help but love, can help but hate;
What malice knows will sure be told,—
Libels on all distinction wait:
But as the misty mountain-mane
Doth not for ever shade its blue,
So vanishes each slander-stain
From all who earnestly and well their duty do.