Too calm to suffer pain, too loving to forget, To lift them to the tranquil heights afar. To gather up the fair laborious day! To have smoothed the path to light To have chased some fiend of Ill away; A little backward to have thrust The instant powers of Drink and Lust; How sweet to light again the glow Of warmer fires than youth's, tho' all the blood runs slow! Oh! is there any joy, Of all that come to girl or boy Or manhood's calmer weal and ease, To vie with these? Here is some fitting profit day by day, Which none can render less; Some glorious gain Fate cannot take away, Oh, brother, fainting on your road! There comes for you, ere life and strength be done, A feeble body, maybe bent, and old, A deeper glow than youth's; a nobler rage; A calm heart, yet not cold. A man or woman, withered perhaps, or bent, To whom pursuit of gold or fame Is as a fire grown cold, an empty name, A cloister calm and pure, A beatific peace greater than tongue can tell. And sweet it is to take, With something of the eager haste of youth To observe the ways of bee, or plant, or bird; Has worked its work sublime; To have touched, with infinite gropings dim, To have found some weed or shell unknown before; more; To make or to declare laws just and sage; These are the joys of Age. Or by the evening hearth, in the old chair, So like, yet so unlike the little ones of old- To sit, girt round with ease, To think, with gentle yearning mind, Of dear souls who have crossed the Infinite Sea; To muse with cheerful hope of what shall be When the night comes which knows no earthly morn; To let the riper days of life, The mother's kiss upon the sleeper's brow, So full of precious memories dear; The wonder of flying Time, so hard to understand! Not in clear eye or ear Dwells our chief profit here. We are not as the brutes, who fade, and make no sign; We are sustained where'er we go, In happiness and woe, By some indwelling faculty divine, Of failing senses, aye, and duller brain, And sets our winged footsteps, scorning Time and Fate I SAW him once before, As he passed by the door; The pavement stones resound They say that in his prime, Not a better man was found Through the town. But now he walks the streets, As he shakes his feeble head, The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has pressed In their bloom; The Last Leaf. And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb. My grandmamma has said— Poor old lady! she is dead Long ago That he had a Roman nose, And his cheek was like a rose In the snow. But now his nose is thin, And a crook is in his back, I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three cornered hat, And the breeches-and all that, Are so queer! And if I should live to be Let them smile as I do now, -Oliver Wendell Holmes. The Old Man Dreams. FOR one hour of joyful youth! Give back my twentieth spring! I'd rather laugh a bright-haired boy, Than reign a gray-beard king! Off with the wrinkled spoils of age! One moment let my life-blood stream My listening angel heard the prayer, "But is there nothing in thy track While the swift seasons hurry back Ah, truest soul of womanhood! Without thee what were life? One bliss I cannot leave behind: And wrote in rainbow dew, "And is there nothing yet unsaid, I could not bear to leave them 11: The man would be a boy again, And so I laughed—my laughter woke -Oliver Wendell Holmes. LL the world's a stage, AL Human Life. And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, And one man, in his time, plays many parts; His acts being seven ages. At first the infant. Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms; And then the whining schoolboy with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like a snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard; Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel; Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair, round belly, with good capon lined, Granny's Eyes. Granny sits dreaming half the day; Life's eventide for her grows gray; Even the sunset's lingering glow Fades fast away. Dear Granny! sun, and moon, and stars Yet God is good, and with the cross Grows less and less. And children's children haunt the place Where Granny sits; and, full of glee, They clamber wildly on her knee, And love to kiss the dear old face And one wee figure, quaintly wise, For, hour by hour, by Granny's side So Granny dear is glad and bright, I'm Growing Old. My nights are blessed with sweetest sleep; I feel no symptoms of decay; I have no cause to mourn nor weep, My foes are impotent and shy; My friends are neither false nor cold, And yet, of late, I often sigh, I'm growing old! My growing talk of olden times, My growing thirst for early news, My growing apathy to rhymes, My growing love of easy shoes, My growing hate of crowds and noise, I'm growing fonder of my staff; I'm growing careless of my dress; I see it in my changing taste; I see it in my growing waist; Ah me! my very laurels breathe |