Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers, When each had numbered more than fourscore years, And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten, Had but begun his Characters of Men.
Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales, At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales;Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, Completed Faust when eighty years were past.
These are indeed exceptions; but they show How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow Into the arctic regions of our lives.
Where little else than life itself survives.
As the barometer foretells the storm While still the skies are clear, the weather warm, So something in us, as old age draws near, Betrays the pressure of the atmosphere.
The nimble mercury, ere we are aware, Descends the elastic ladder of the air;The telltale blood in artery and vein Sinks from its higher levels in the brain;Whatever poet, orator, or sage May say of it, old age is still old age.
It is the waning, not the crescent moon;
The dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon:
It is not strength, but weakness; not desire, But its surcease; not the fierce heat of fire, The burning and consuming element, But that of ashes and of embers spent, In which some living sparks we still discern, Enough to warm, but not enough to burn.
What then? Shall we sit idly down and say The night hath come; it is no longer day?
The night hath not yet come; we are not quite Cut off from labor by the failing light;Something remains for us to do or dare;
Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear;Not Oedipus Coloneus, or Greek Ode, Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode Out of the gateway of the Tabard inn, But other something, would we but begin;For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
A BOOK OF SONNETS
THREE FRIENDS OF MINE
I
When I remember them, those friends of mine, Who are no longer here, the noble three, Who half my life were more than friends to me, And whose discourse was like a generous wine, I most of all remember the divine Something, that shone in them, and made us see The archetypal man, and what might be The amplitude of Nature's first design.
In vain I stretch my hands to clasp their hands;I cannot find them.Nothing now is left But a majestic memory.They meanwhile Wander together in Elysian lands, Perchance remembering me, who am bereft Of their dear presence, and, remembering, smile.
II
In Attica thy birthplace should have been, Or the Ionian Isles, or where the seas Encircle in their arms the Cyclades, So wholly Greek wast thou in thy serene And childlike joy of life, O Philhellene!
Around thee would have swarmed the Attic bees;Homer had been thy friend, or Socrates, And Plato welcomed thee to his demesne.
For thee old legends breathed historic breath;Thou sawest Poseidon in the purple sea, And in the sunset Jason's fleece of gold!
O, what hadst thou to do with cruel Death, Who wast so full of life, or Death with thee, That thou shouldst die before thou hadst grown old!
III
I stand again on the familiar shore, And hear the waves of the distracted sea Piteously calling and lamenting thee, And waiting restless at thy cottage door.
The rocks, the sea-weed on the ocean floor, The willows in the meadow, and the free Wild winds of the Atlantic welcome me;Then why shouldst thou be dead, and come no more?
Ah, why shouldst thou be dead, when common men Are busy with their trivial affairs, Having and holding? Why, when thou hadst read Nature's mysterious manuscript, and then Wast ready to reveal the truth it bears, Why art thou silent! Why shouldst thou be dead?
IV
River, that stealest with such silent pace Around the City of the Dead, where lies A friend who bore thy name, and whom these eyes Shall see no more in his accustomed place, Linger and fold him in thy soft embrace And say good night, for now the western skies Are red with sunset, and gray mists arise Like damps that gather on a dead man's face.
Good night! good night! as we so oft have said Beneath this roof at midnight in the days That are no more, and shall no more return.
Thou hast but taken thy lamp and gone to bed;I stay a little longer, as one stays To cover up the embers that still burn.
V
The doors are all wide open; at the gate The blossomed lilacs counterfeit a blaze, And seem to warm the air; a dreamy haze Hangs o'er the Brighton meadows like a fate, And on their margin, with sea-tides elate, The flooded Charles, as in the happier days, Writes the last letter of his name, and stays His restless steps, as if compelled to wait.
I also wait; but they will come no more, Those friends of mine, whose presence satisfied The thirst and hunger of my heart.Ah me!
They have forgotten the pathway to my door!
Something is gone from nature since they died, And summer is not summer, nor can be.
CHAUCER
An old man in a lodge within a park;
The chamber walls depicted all around With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound.
And the hurt deer.He listeneth to the lark, Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound;He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound, Then writeth in a book like any clerk.
He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote The Canterbury Tales, and his old age Made beautiful with song; and as I read I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note Of lark and linnet, and from every page Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.
SHAKESPEARE
A vision as of crowded city streets, With human life in endless overflow;Thunder of thoroughfares; trumpets that blow To battle; clamor, in obscure retreats, Of sailors landed from their anchored fleets;Tolling of bells in turrets, and below Voices of children, and bright flowers that throw O'er garden-walls their intermingled sweets!