 | Vigil and vision |  |
109
THE SILVER AGE.
1
THE memories of the Age of Gold,The age of innocence and glee,
Of primal peace and purity,
Whereof whilom the poets told,
Wellnigh within our hearts are cold:
No more of its return dream we
Nor that Life ever young might be
Can we conceive, that now is old.
Yet, at threescore, a purer page
Of life we reach, a stiller shore,
Where Passion's storms no longer rage
And peace, at last, we have once more:
If not the Golden, at threescore
We have, at least, the Silver Age.
2
To tell again the tale of things long told,To tread in thought the over-travelled ways,
To shrink with shame to think in bygone days
How oft night's treasure in the dawn-light cold
To nought hath shrivelled, even as elfin gold,
Life's sombre fairy-tale with sad amaze
To overread by hope's declining rays,
These are the occupations of the old.
Yet that there is in eld which doth console
For all that life must leave and lose with youth,
The end of hopeless hoping, the surcease
Of strife and stress, the clearer air of truth,
That floods the heart, the sunset in the soul,
That on life's passing sheds its light of peace.
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3
In my hot youth, no flowers beneath our skiesOf daily life and use would serve my turn,
No bluebells nodding in the golden fern,
No violets purple as my lady's eyes,
No roses ruddy as her lips: the prize
For which I longed by earthly mead or burn
Was not to seek, but in the fields etern
It flow'red, the asphodel of Paradise.
But, now that youth is past and age draws on
And the hot blood grows cool for Time's relent,
No more I sigh for blossoms in no land
That ever blew on which the sunlight shone,
But make my shift with that I have in hand,
The flow'rage of the plant of Sad Content.
4
Oft do men say, when age hath given them pause,Lapsed life still willing Time to them restore,
“Had age youth's ableness, youth age's lore!”
Of all the idle Will-begotten saws
Surely the idlest! By the eternal laws,
Fools, were life given you to live once more,
That would you do which you have done before,
For that the effect ensueth still the cause.
Youth is to eld and unto youth is age
As Spring to Winter and to Winter Spring.
Wrote not the Winter pause upon the page,
The world were burned away with blossoming.
So after Life comes Death, its seeding-stage,
The darkling half of its unending ring.
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5
In my young days I loved the winter-cold:The laggard mornings and the languid rays
Of the pale sun, well nigh too weak the haze
To pierce, were dearer to me than the bold
Upmounting dawns of June and the fierce gold
That overflooded all the August ways:
To me the long, still nights, the darkling days
A tale of dreamful peace and mystery told.
But now, youth gone, I languish for the sun,
Like my old hound, that loves at length to lie
And bask and feel the blesséd fluid heat
Through all his age-chilled veins and arteries run,
Ere yet the harbingers of death drawn nigh
To the faint heart creep up from the cold feet.
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