Sonnet 10 (Sonnets, 1833)

Youth, love, and mirth, what are they but the portion,
Wherewith the Prodigal left his Father's home,
Through foreign lands in search of bliss to roam,
And find each seeming joy a mere abortion,
And every smile, an agonised distortion
Of pale Repentance' face, and barren womb ?
Youth, love, and mirth ! too quickly they consume
Their passive substance, and their small proportion
Of fleeting life, in memory's backward view,
Still dwindles to a point, a twinkling star,
Long gleaming o'er the onward course of Being,
That tells us whence we came, and where we are,
And tells us too, how swiftly we are fleeing
From all we were and loved, when life was new.