Poems of MDCCCXXXIII

“Mine be the strength of spirit...”

Reprinted without any alteration, except that Power is spelt with a
small p, among the Juvenilia in 1871 and onward.

Mine be the strength of spirit, full and free,
Like some broad river rushing down alone,
With the selfsame impulse wherewith he was thrown
From his loud fount upon the echoing lea:—
Which with increasing might doth forward flee
By town, and tower, and hill, and cape, and isle,
And in the middle of the green salt sea
Keeps his blue waters fresh for many a mile.
Mine be the Power which ever to its sway
Will win the wise at once, and by degrees
May into uncongenial spirits flow;
Even as the great gulfstream of Florida
Floats far away into the Northern Seas
The lavish growths of Southern Mexico.

To—— (“My life is full...”)

When this poem was republished among the Juvenilia in 1871 several
alterations were made in it. For the first stanza was substituted the
following:—

My life is full of weary days,
But good things have not kept aloof,
Nor wander’d into other ways:
I have not lack’d thy mild reproof,
Nor golden largess of thy praise.

The second began “And now shake hands”. In the fourth stanza for
“sudden laughters” of the jay was substituted the felicitous “sudden
scritches,” and the sixth and seventh stanzas were suppressed.