Therefore I summon age To grant youth's heritage, Life's struggle having so far reached its term: Thence shall I pa.s.s, approved A man, for aye removed From the developed brute; a G.o.d though in the germ.

And I shall thereupon Take rest, ere I be gone Once more on my adventure brave and new: Fearless and unperplexed, When I wage battle next, What weapons to select, what armor to indue.

Youth ended, I shall try My gain or loss thereby; Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold: And I shall weigh the same, Give life its praise or blame: Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.

For note, when evening shuts, A certain moment cuts The deed off, calls the glory from the gray: A whisper from the west Shoots--"Add this to the rest, Take it and try its worth: here dies another day."

So, still within this life, Though lifted o'er its strife, Let me discern, compare, p.r.o.nounce at last, "This rage was right i' the main, That acquiescence vain: The Future I may face now I have proved the Past."

For more is not reserved To man, with soul just nerved To act to-morrow what he learns to-day: Here, work enough to watch The Master work, and catch Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.

As it was better, youth Should strive, through acts uncouth, Toward making, than repose on aught found made: So, better, age, exempt From strife, should know, than tempt Further. Thou waitedest age: wait death nor be afraid!

Enough now, if the Right And Good and Infinite Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own, With knowledge absolute, Subject to no dispute From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.

Be there, for once and all, Severed great minds from small, Announced to each his station in the Past!

Was I, the world arraigned, Were they, my soul disdained, Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!

Now, who shall arbitrate?

Ten men love what I hate, Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; Ten, who in ears and eyes Match me: we all surmise, They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?

Not on the vulgar ma.s.s Called "work," must sentence pa.s.s, Things done, that took the eye and had the price; O'er which, from level stand, The low world laid its hand, Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:

But all, the world's coa.r.s.e thumb And finger failed to plumb, So pa.s.sed in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:

Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped; All I could never be, All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to G.o.d, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

Ay, note that Potter's wheel, That metaphor! and feel Why time spins fast, why pa.s.sive lies our clay,-- Thou, to whom fools propound, When the wine makes its round, "Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day?"

Fool! All that is, at all, Lasts ever, past recall; Earth changes, but thy soul and G.o.d stand sure: What entered into thee, That was, is, and shall be: Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.

He fixed thee 'mid this dance Of plastic circ.u.mstance, This Present, thou, forsooth, would fain arrest: Machinery just meant To give thy soul its bent, Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.

What though the earlier grooves Which ran the laughing loves Around thy base, no longer pause and press?

What though, about thy rim, Scull-things in order grim Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?

Look not thou down but up!

To uses of a cup, The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal, The new wine's foaming flow, The Master's lips a-glow!

Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needest thou with earth's wheel?

But I need, now as then, Thee, G.o.d, who mouldest men; And since, not even while the whirl was worst, Did I--to the wheel of life With shapes and colors rife, Bound dizzily,--mistake my end, to slake thy thirst:

So, take and use thy work: Amend what flaws may lurk, What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!

My times be in thy hand!

Perfect the cup as planned!

Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

Robert Browning [1812-1889]

HUMAN LIFE

Sad is our youth, for it is ever going, Crumbling away beneath our very feet; Sad is our life, for onward it is flowing, In current unperceived because so fleet; Sad are our hopes for they were sweet in sowing, But tares, self-sown, have overtopped the wheat; Sad are our joys, for they were sweet in blowing; And still, O still, their dying breath is sweet: And sweet is youth, although it hath bereft us Of that which made our childhood sweeter still; And sweet our life's decline, for it hath left us A nearer Good to cure an older Ill: And sweet are all things, when we learn to prize them Not for their sake, but His who grants them or denies them.

Aubrey Thomas de Vere [1814-1902]

YOUNG AND OLD From "The Water Babies"

When all the world is young, lad, And all the trees are green; And every goose a swan, lad, And every la.s.s a queen; Then hey for boot and horse, lad, And round the world away; Young blood must have its course, lad, And every dog his day.

When all the world is old, lad, And all the trees are brown; And all the sport is stale, lad, And all the wheels run down: Creep home, and take your place there, The spent and maimed among: G.o.d grant you find one face there You loved when all was young.

Charles Kingsley [1819-1875]

THE ISLE OF THE LONG AGO

Oh, a wonderful stream is the River Time, As it flows through the realm of Tears, With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme, And a broader sweep and a surge sublime As it blends with the ocean of Years.

How the winters are drifting like flakes of snow!

And the summers like buds between; And the year in the sheaf--so they come and they go On the River's breast with its ebb and flow, As they glide in the shadow and sheen.

There's a magical Isle up the River Time Where the softest of airs are playing; There's a cloudless sky and a tropical clime, And a voice as sweet as a vesper chime, And the Junes with the roses are staying.

And the name of this Isle is the Long Ago, And we bury our treasures there; There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow-- They are heaps of dust, but we loved them so!

There are trinkets and tresses of hair.

There are fragments of song that n.o.body sings, And a part of an infant's prayer, There's a harp unswept and a lute without strings, There are broken vows and pieces of rings, And the garments that she used to wear.

There are hands that are waved when the fairy sh.o.r.e By the mirage is lifted in air; And we sometimes hear through the turbulent roar Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before, When the wind down the River is fair.

Oh, remembered for aye be the blessed Isle All the day of our life till night, And when evening comes with its beautiful smile, And our eyes are closing in slumber awhile, May that "Greenwood" of soul be in sight.

Benjamin Franklin Taylor [1819-1887]

GROWING OLD

What is it to grow old?