 | The bird and the bell, with other poems |  |
297
YOUTH AND AGE.
When young, I slighted art, yet sighed for fame;Dashed into careless rhyme, and toyed with thought.
When art and thoughts with age and wisdom came,
I laid aside the verse that youth had wrought.
These fruits, I said, were green, that from my bough,
When windy fancies swept, so lightly fell;
A mellower autumn sun is shining now,
That shames the cruder crop once loved so well.
Yet when it chanced some tender hearts had found
A sweeter flavor in the juiceless things
That lay in heaps neglected on the ground,
Than in the fruits the ripening season brings,
I thought, Must life retrace its pilgrimage,
And youth sing songs for youth, and age for age?
1874
| The bird and the bell, with other poems | |