The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er:
So calm are we when passions are no more;
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes _passion._
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.
The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light, through chinks that time has made:
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become,
As they draw near to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view
That stand upon the threshold of the new.
It would be a poor victory where age was the sole conqueror. But I doubt
if age ever gains the victory alone. Let Waller, however, have this
praise: his song soars with his subject. It is a true praise. There are
men who write well until they try the noble, and then they fare like the
falling star, which, when sought where it fell, is, according to an old
fancy, discovered a poor jelly.
Sir Thomas Brown, a physician, whose prose writings are as peculiar as
they are valuable, was of the same age as Waller. He partakes to a
considerable degree of the mysticism which was so much followed in his
day, only in his case it influences his literature most--his mode of
utterance more than his mode of thought. His _True Christian Morals_ is a
very valuable book, notwithstanding the obscurity that sometimes arises
in that, as in all his writings, from his fondness for Latin words.
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