We live our lives with rogues and fools, dead and alive, alive and dead,
We die ’twixt one who feels the pulse and one who frets and clouds the head:

And,—oh, the Pity!—hardly conned the lesson comes its fatal term;
Fate bids us bundle up our books, and bear them bod’ily to the worm:

Hardly we learn to wield the blade before the wrist grows stiff and old;
Hardly we learn to ply the pen ere Thought and Fancy faint with cold.

Hardly we find the path of love, to sink the self, forget the “I,”
When sad suspicion grips the heart, when Man, the Man begins to die:

Hardly we scale the wisdom-heights, and sight the Pisgah-scene around,
And breathe the breath of heav’enly air, and hear the Spheres’ harmonious sound;