The Earle family : Ralph Earle and his descendants

460 THE EARLE FAMILY
EXPERIENCE.
By Sarah Earle [871-4], afterward Hadwen.
"We run and leap by the side of a babbling brook, as if we
would run a race with it : but beside waters deep, slow and
lonely, our race is sullen and silent as their course."
—Sir Walter Scott, in Redgauntlet.
Marked ye that light and youthful form,
That eye so bright, that cheek so warm
With generous feeling's purest glow?
And marked ye, too, that tranquil brow?
Marked ye that light, elastic bound,
As if it spurned the unconscious ground?
—
That form enshrined a heart at rest.
No stormy passions shook that breast.
His soul was pure, his spirits light,
And therefore was that eye so bright.
And calm that brow, for grief and care
Had never traced a furrow there.
Of vice he had not learned the form,
And therefore was that cheek so warm :
So pure himself, his spotless mind
Glowed with the love of all his kind.
Exulted in the good around,
And hence
******
that light, elastic bound
That leap, as if it would keep pace
With the swift streamlet's rapid race.
That form is changed : though few his years,
That lustrous eye is dimmed with tears.
And mark his brow, see, graven there,
The lines of anxious thought and care;
That cheek has lost its healthful glow,
And lo !
his step is altered now.