d numbered more than fourscore years;
And Theophrastus at fourscore and ten
Had but begun his "Characters of Men;"
Chaucer at Woodstock with his nightingales,
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales;
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed Faust when eighty years were past:
These are indeed exceptions; but they show
How far the Gulf Stream of our youth may flow
Into the arctic regions of our lives,
Where little else than life itself survives.

Measured by this test of creative power and its persistency, how
variable is the duration of human life! Sometimes the creative power
appears in early youth; but when that happens there is generally an
early surcease. Sometimes the power comes late and remains long.
Sometimes it flashes forth in the early morning and remains in the
after twilight. Estimated by years this productive power (which goes
by the name of genius) sometimes reaches only to a few score moons.
Sometimes it reaches to a score of years. Sometimes, though rarely, it
extends to three-score years or more.

Thomas Chatterton went to a suicide's grave in Potter's Field when he
was only seventeen years, nine months, and four days of age. I know of
no other case of so great precocity; it is beyond belief. His mind had
been productive for about three years. Byron's productive period
covered sixteen years--no more. Pope began at twelve and ended at
fifty-six.

In our own age, Tennyson has done well. Making an early effort to
begin, he, like Dryden, did not really reach the creative epoch until
he was fully thirty. His creative period covers about fifty-nine
years. It extends from "A Dream of Fair Women," in 1833, to "Crossing
the Bar," in 1892.

The best example, however, in the history of the human mind, is that
of William Cullen Bryant; that is, Bryant has real creations that lie
further apart in time than can be paralleled, so far as I know, in the
case of any other of the sons of men. The date of "Thanatopsis" is not
precisely known. It belongs, however, to the years 1812-13. Bryant was
then eighteen--in his nineteenth year. Add to 1812 sixty-four years
and we have 1876, the date of the publication of the "Flood of Years."
The two poems in question lie apart in production by the space of
fully three-score and four years. It is a marvel! And why not?

To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms,

why should not life, producti