Perthshire in bygone days

WILLIAM NICOLL. 367
THE THEEE STAGES IN MAN'S LIFE.
What is youth ? a joyous dream
Of gay, unclouded light,
Where all is happiness, we deem,
And ocean, mountain, wood, and stream
Speak to our hearts a welcome theme,
With Fancy's visions bright.
What is our manhood? 'tis a fight,
Where sordid thoughts control,
And early feelings, pure and bright
Are hid, like stars in cloudy night,
By wordly thoughts that scorch and blight,
And wither up the soul.
What is our age ? a waste of care,
A dreary wilderness,
Where all we loved and thought so fair
Is vanished like the desert air,
And joy is quenched in sad despair,
And utter hopelessness.
The writer of these lines must have been a deep miner
in the book of life, before he could realise, at sixteen, facts
that are understood to become obvious only as that life
progresses. True, a youth is not long in the world before
he feels its hardships ; but, as these hardships beset him,
he generally forgets his former pleasures, and thus drops
the poetic faculty — poetry, as an art, consisting mainly in
building with choice materials the two castles of "Evil"
and " Good." The Serpent had no success with Eve
until he introduced the poet's dream, " Ye shall be as gods,
knowing good and evil." Milton's great poem is the song
of good and evil. Another great poet says, —
"lis sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark,
Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home.
Here is good and evil beautifully contrasted. The mind is
led away to the way-worn traveller on the lonely road :
from him to the ever-watchful dog, upon whose sharp-set
ear the first echo of his footstep falls ; and then to his
blazing fire and smiling domestic circle. "William Nicoll
had drunk deep of Nature's well in his very early days, and
her images so impressed his poetic heart that he was able
upon any future occasion to call them up.
-wood and stream,
Speak to our hearts a welcome theme.