A Retrospect
M
THERE’s A TIDE in the pleasures and prospects of men,
Once it flows to its summit, then ebbs back again:
The bark of our fortunes is founder’d and lost,
Our feelings are wither’d, our friendships are cross’d
Yet still, ‘mid the trials of loitering years,
There’s a calm amid storms, and a joy among tears,
On turning from sands where our wreck has been cast,
To that spring-tide of fortune, that dream of the past,
Where memory recalls, with the outlines of truth,
And the tints of Elysium, the hopes of our youth
(A warbler of Paradise wore in his wing
The pencil that color’d those visions of spring):
Canst thou not recall from the thoughts of the mind
That blissful illusion (’tis long left behind),
When the rainbow’s mild colors were beaming and clear,
And the voice of the charmer spoke soft in thine ear?
M
M
Robert A. Slaney, Esq.
Member of Parliament
1825
