Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, YOUTH'S FAIR RESOLVE, by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

YOUTH'S FAIR RESOLVE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Dear friend, I would that our free life should be
Last Line: To these a sigh!
Alternate Author Name(s): Houghton, 1st Baron; Houghton, Lord
Subject(s): Youth


DEAR friend, I would that our free life should be
Like the red blood that bounding from the heart
Speeds onward through each ministering artery,
Bearing fresh force to each remotest part,
And stagnates never,
Till Death's uncouth and wintry mastery
Dams up the river.

Is it because our fellows are depraved
That we should leave our work and be like them?
No, -- if the laws of love and truth are braved,
From peasant's cap to jewelled diadem, --
The more's the pity;
"Ten righteous men," the Patriarch says, "had saved
The heaven-cursed city."

The hermit sage an ancient anchorite,
Who went to wilds and made the wolves their friends,
Even they perchance had fought a better fight,
And served more righteously their being's ends,
Had they remained
In the world's pale, and kept, with perilous might,
Their faith unstained:

Had they abandoned ev'n the commune high
Which oft in solitude they held with God, --
The lonely prayer, the speechless ecstasy
In which the angel-paths of Heaven they trod,
And sacrificed
Upon that altar which saw Jesus die,
What best they prized.

And I -- oh! think you not I too have known
'Tis sweet to muse beneath the old elm tree,
While night lets loose her drapery's spangled zone,
Or watch the sun-god woo the western sea,
With rich parade,
And send my thoughts, to brave adventure prone,
On strange crusade?

Or else with you a' strolling hand in hand
Break lances in a tournament of rhyme, --
Dispute about the tints of faery-land, --
Or, by some heritage which olden Time
Has left the wise,
Bid wondrous pageants, as by sorcerer's wand,
Before us rise.

If life were all like this to you and me,
How would it matter to be young or old?
Where is the privilege of youth's buoyancy,
Could we thus turn Time's iron scythe to gold?
The pleasures given
To man were all too great, and there would be
No want of heaven.

Let us go forth, and resolutely dare,
With sweat of brow, to toil our little day, --
And if a tear fall on the task of care,
In memory of those spring-hours past away,
Brush it not by!
Our hearts to God! to brother-men
Aid, labor, blessing, prayer, and then
To these a sigh!





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