--
Not tameless but untamed--for life
Soon breaks the spirit with its strife
And they who in their souls have nursed
The brightest visions, are the first
To learn how Disappointment's blight
Strips life of its illusive light;
How dreams the heart has dearest held
Are ever first to be dispelled;
How hope, and power, and love, and fame,
Are each an idly sounding name,
A phantom, a deceit, a wile,
That woos and dazzles to beguile.
But time had not yet tutored him,
The youth of hardy heart and limb,
Who quickly drew his courser's bit;
For though too haughty to submit,
In strife for mastery with men,
Yet to a prayer, or a caress,
His soul became all gentleness,--
An infant's hand might lead him then:
So answered he,--"In sooth the way
My steed and I have passed to-day,
Is of such weary, winding length,
As sorely to have tried our strength,
And I will bless the bread and salt
Of him who kindly bids me halt."
Then springing lightly to the ground,
His girth and saddle he unbound,
And turning from the path aside,
The steed and guest, the host and guide,
Sought where the old man's friendly door
Stood ever open to the poor:
The poor--for seldom came the great,
Or rich, the apers of their state,
That simple, rude abode to see,
Or claim its hospitality.

III.

From where the hermit's cottage stood,
Beneath its huge old guardian tree,
The gazer's wand'ring eye might see,
Where, in its maze of field and wood,
And stretching many a league away,
A broad and smiling valley lay:--
Lay stilly calm, and sweetly fair,
As if Death had not entered there;
As if its flowers, so bright of bloom,
Its birds, so gay of song and wing,
Would never lose their soft perfume,
Would never, never cease to sing.
Fat flocks were in its glens at rest,
Pure waters wandered o'er its breast,
The sky was clear, the winds were still,
Rich harvests grew on every hill,
The sun in mid-day glory smiled,
And nature slumbered as a child.

IV.

And now, their rustic banquet done,
And sheltered from the noontide sun
By the old willow's pleasant shade,
The guest and host the scene surveyed;
Marked how the mountain's mighty base
T