After-Thought
. I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide,
As being past away.—Vain sympathies!
For, backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes,
I see what was, and is, and will abide;
Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide;
The Form remains, the Function never dies;
While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,
We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
The elements, must vanish;—be it so!
Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour;
And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,
Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know.
NOTES1. This sonnet is a postscript to a series of sonnets, written at intervals between 1806 or 1807 and 1820, in which the poet follows the course of the river Duddon from its source, where Westmoreland, Cumberland and Lancashire meet, to the sea.7.Cf. Moschus, Lament for Bion, 102, "But we mighty and strong, we men so wise in our wisdom," from that part of the poem in which Moschus speaks of the mortality of man as contrasted with the yearly revival of vegetation.
