What is it life uplifts?
Who entered, bearing gifts?
What floods from heaven the being overpower
When thrushes choir, when grasses flower?




AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS

(AD COMITEM JUNIOREM)


Comrade Youth! Sit down with me
Underneath the summer tree,
Cool green dome whose shade is sweet,
Where the sunny roadways meet,
See, the ancient finger-post,
Silver-bleached with rain and shine,
Warns us like a noon-day ghost:
That way's yours, and this way's mine!
I would hold you with delays
Here at parting of the ways.

Hold you! I as well might look
To detain the racing brook
With regrets and grievance tender,
As my comrade swift and slender,
Shy, capricious, all of spring!
Catch the wind with blossoms laden,