I visited Roslyn a short time ago, and walked for hours along the sands, picturing in my memory the pleasant faces, and recalling the joyous tones of the many whom I had known and loved.  Other boys were playing by the sea-side, who were strangers to me and I to them; and as I marked how wave after wave rolled up the shore, with its murmur and its foam, each sweeping farther than the other, each effacing the traces of the last, I saw an emblem of the passing generations, and was content to find that my place knew me no more.

Ah me the golden time!—­
But its hours have passed away,
With the pure and bracing clime,
And the bright and merry day.

And the sea still laughs to the rosy shells ashore,
       And the shore still shines in the lustre of the wave;
     But the joyaunce and the beauty of the boyish days is o’er,
       And many of the beautiful lie quiet in the grave;—­
         And he who comes again
         Wears a brow of toil and pain,
     And wanders sad and silent by the melancholy main.