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78
AN OLD COAT.
Each has his own superstitions, and I have my fancies like others:One is about my old coats; scarcely I know how it came.
Nor do I know, dear Reader, which you are likely to give it,
Whether a smile or a sigh: all on your humour depends.
When I give up an old coat, it seems as if then I were losing
All of a sudden the years which with that coat I have passed;
Older I suddenly feel; for the life which is daily expended
(This is my fancy as well) clings to the folds of the coat.
What has become of the youth of which pitiless Powers deprive us,
Hour by hour, alas? May it not lurk in the coat?
Knew not the coat the emotions, the hope and the fear and the pleasure?
Was it not close to the heart, feeling the least of its throbs?
Only this morning, by chance, I fell on a coat long discarded;
One I had worn at a time when I was happier than now.
As I looked on it, those days, and myself, as I now am no longer,
Clearly, too clearly! rose up; just for a minute, no more.
Almost I then could have cried to this spectre thus suddenly met with,
Give me the life thou hast drained; mine it was then and 'tis now!
Where are the years that I gave thee? the years that I left in thy lining?
Where are the youth and the health? Where are the hopes unfulfilled?
'Twas but a shabby old coat; but I thought as I looked on the edges,
Thready and white, of the sleeves: this which is worn was my life.
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