 | Stones from The Quarry |  |
OLD AGE.
If it be hard to learn, how harder farTo unlearn! This is the sad lot of age;
The hardest penance in that pilgrimage—
Either with dull Oblivion to war,
And with those younger strengths that placèd are
On the forefront and vantage of the stage,
Or fall into the abject rear, and page
The heels of Time, and cast-off fashions wear!
'Tis a hard lot, yet needful; all moves off,
Or on. Life, like a mighty whirlwind, blows
From the great threshing-floor the dust, and chaff,
And wastes of Time, who doth old texts new gloze,
Rewrite old histories, at fables laugh,
And mortgages in his own right foreclose!
| Stones from The Quarry | |