AN UNDISCOVERED ISLAND. 203 



all manner of weariness they are the recurring 

 vision and revelation of the eternal order. All the 

 world waits on them and rejoices in them ; and the 

 bitter knowledge of what lies before the eager feet, 

 waiting with passionate hope on the threshold, does 

 not lessen the perennial interest in that fair picture; 

 for in youth and love are realized the universal 

 ideals of men. Youth and love are the mortal syno 

 nyms of immortality ; all that freshness of spirit, 

 buoyancy of strength, energy of hope, boundless 

 ness of joy, completeness and glory of life, imply, 

 are typified in these two things, always vanishing 

 and yet always reappearing among men. Wearing 

 the beautiful masks of youth and love, the gods 

 continually revisit the earth, and in their luminous 

 presence faith forever rebuilds its shattered tem 

 ples. 



That which makes youth and love so precious to 

 us is the play they give to the Imagination ; indeed, 

 the better part of them both is compounded of Im 

 agination. The horizons recede from their gaze 

 because the second sight of Imagination is theirs 

 that prescience which pierces the mists which en 

 fold us, and discerns the vaster world through 

 which we move for the most part with halting feet 

 and blinded eyes. Youth knows that it was born 

 to life and power and exhaustless resources ; love 

 knows that it has found and shall forever possess 

 those beautiful ideals which are the passion of noble 

 natures. 



