The Tuscan Maid

How pleasant and how sad the turning
Of human life, when side by side
The child and youth begin to glide
Along the vale of years;
The pure twin-being for a little space,
With lightsome heart, and yet a graver face,
Too young for wo, though not for tears.
This turning tide is Ursulina's now;
The time is mark'd upon her brow;
Now every thought and feeling throw
Their shadows on her face;
And so are every thought and feeling join'd,
'T were hard to answer whether heart or mind
Of either were the native place.
The things that once she loved are still the same;
Yet now there needs another name
To give the feeling which they claim,
While she the feeling gives;
She cannot call it gladness or delight;
And yet there seems a richer, lovelier light
On e'en the humblest thing that lives.
She sees the mottled moth come twinkling by,
And sees it sip the flowret nigh;
Yet not, as once, with eager cry
She grasps the pretty thing;
Her thoughts now mingle with its tranquil mood—
So poised in air, as if on air it stood
To show its gold and purple wing.
She hears the bird without a wish to snare,
But rather on the azure air
To mount, and with it wander there
To some untrodden land;
As if it told her in its happy song
Of pleasures strange, that never can belong
To aught of sight or touch of hand.
Now the young soul her mighty power shall prove,
And outward things around her move,
Pure ministers of purer love,
And make the heart her home;
Or to the meaner senses sink a slave,
To do their bidding, though they madly crave
Through hateful scenes of vice to roam.
But, Ursulina, thine the better choice;
Thine eyes so speak, as with a voice:
Thy heart may still in earth rejoice
And all its beauty love;
But no, not all this fair, enchanting earth,
With all its spells, can give the rapture birth
That waits thy conscious soul above.