UPON the landscape of his coming life
A youth high-gifted gazed, and found it fair:
The heights of work, the floods of praise, were there.
What friendships, what desires, what love, what wife?—
All things to come. The fanned springtime was rife
With imminent solstice; and the ardent air
Had summer sweets and autumn fires to bear;—
Heart's ease full-pulsed with perfect strength for strife.
A mist has risen: we see the youth no more:
Does he see on and strive on? And may we
Late-tottering world-worn hence, find his to be
The young strong hand which helps us up that shore?
Or, echoing the No More with Nevermore,
Must Night be ours and his? We hope: and he?