“To-morrow? Shall the fleeting years
Abide our questioning? They go
All heedless of our hopes and fears.
To-morrow? ’Tis not ours to know
That we again shall see the flowers.
To-morrow is the gods’, but oh,
To-day is ours.”
We all salute heartily and sincerely the “grandeur and exquisiteness” of old age. It is not because Doctor Experience is old that we distrust his judgment; it is not his judgment that we distrust half so much as his facts. They are good, as facts go, but we are all foreordained and predestined to reap our own crop. He need not take the trouble to nail his sign, “No thoroughfare,” on the highways that have perplexed him, for we, too, must stray into the brambles and stumble at the ford. It is decreed that we sail without those old charts of his, and we drop our signal-books and barometer overboard without a qualm. The reefs change with every tide, adding zest to our adventure; and while the gulfs may wash us down, there’s always the chance that, in our own way and after much anxious and stupid sailing, we may ground our barnacled hulks on the golden sands of the Happy Isles. Our blood cries for the open sea or the long white road, and
“Rare the moment and exceeding fleet
When the spring sunlight, tremulous and thin,