Charles Brooks

And what men call the spirit of the age,
Is but the spirit of the gentlemen
Who glass their own thoughts in the pliant page,
And image back themselves.

The godlike essence of our heaven-born powers
Must yield to strange and still more strange intrusion;
Soon as the good things of this world are ours,
We deem our nobler self a vain illusion,
And heaven-born instincts—very life of life—
Are strangled in the low terrestrial strife.

ysterious Nature may not choose
To unveil her secrets to the stare of day,
And what from the mind’s eye she stores away,

The thing we use not a dead burden lies,
But what the moment brings the wise man knows to prize.

Who bore the hard trial
Of self-denial,
And, victorious, ascends to the skies whence

What we know not is what we need to know,
And what we know, we might as well let go;

Two souls, alas! within my bosom dwell!