In my youth's summer I did sing of One,

The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind; ⁶

Again I seize the theme, then but begun,

And bear it with me, as the rushing wind

Bears the cloud onwards: in that Tale I find

The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears,

Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind,

O'er which all heavily the journeying years

Plod the last sands of life,—where not a flower appears.