And Theophrastus at four-score and ten
Had but begun his characters of men.
Chaucer at Wadstock, with the nightingales,
At sixty wrote The Canterbury Tales.
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed Faust when eighty years were past.
These are, indeed, exceptions, but they show
How far the gulf stream of our youth may flow
Into the Arctic regions of our lives
Where little else but life itself survives.