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Old Age
- BETWEEN the midnight and the morn
- When wake the weary heart and head,
- Troops of gray ghosts from lands forlorn
- Keep tryst about my sleepless bed.
- I hear their cold, thin voices say:
- ‘Your youth is dying; by‐and‐by
- All that makes up your life to‐day
- Withered by age, will shrink and die!’
- Will it be so? Will age slay all
- The dreams of love and hope and faith—
- Put out the sun beyond recall,
- And lap us in a living death?
- Will hearts grown old forget their youth?
- And hands grown old give up the strife?
- Shall we accept as ordered truth
- The dismal anarchy of life?
- Better die now—at once be free
- Of hope and fear—renounce the whole:
- For of what worth would living be
- Should one—grown old—outlive one’s soul?
- Yet see: through curtains closely drawn
- Creeps in the exorcising light;
- The sacred fingers of the dawn
- Put all my troop of ghosts to flight.
- And then I hear the brave Sun’s voice,
- Though still the skies are gray and dim;
- ‘Old age comes never—Oh, rejoice—
- Except to those who beckon him.
- ‘All that youth’s dreams are nourished by,
- By that shall dreams in age be fed—
- Thy noble dreams can never die
- Until thyself shall wish them dead!’
1890.
