“O Augur, dost thou not know I am old, With wrinkled winter writ about my face, A trembling at the fingers and the knees, Like some old, cunning instrument whose force Is rattled out, fit only to be stored Within the dusty chambers of the past, Where wintry key-hole moanings tune in vain The coffined mem’ries from their dusty sleep, Where chance a heatless ray may fall at morn, Nor startle the wainscot-gnawing, nor the dull, Eternal presence of that lifeless past.
“O Augur, this is death, and I am fain For the long slumber ’neath the greening grass. For as a winter-brook beneath its ice, My channel of life is shrunken low in me, And life’s great voices dwindle and sink afar; And time’s musician charms mine ears in vain: For like some tree amid the forest wide, I reared my trunk and built my tent of green, And spread my boughs to gusty storm and sun, And knew spring’s joy and autumn’s leafy pride; And now the winter of all my days has come, When, leafless, budless, I must lie me low; And be a senseless mound where life will climb, In springs to come, unconscious of my sleep.
“Nor, Augur, am I sad, nor hold desire To lengthen out my days beyond their time; For when the timbers of the house are rotten The roof-tree sinks, and the old walls refuse To keep the winters out; then comes the time When the householder packs his goods to go. So I will wend me where I know me not, But down the twilight roads of easeful death, Perchance an inn where I may find me rest.
“Yea, Augur, I had sadness in my days, Mine evil hours as other men have had, When night was night with scarce a morn to come, And all the alley-ways of hope seemed stayed With some vague stumblings, where I fained to crawl And moan and grope and plead and feel my way. Yea, I have had mine hours of glory too, When life seemed all a morning stretching on Out into sunny haze, and earth was filled With youth and joy, and every path held hope, Veiling the future in a glamorous mist.
“And I must say, O Augur, even now, When I lie here upon this edge of life, That slopes far downward to the soundless dark, That I here feel me even as when a child I wandered on the sunny slopes of morn, And heard the elfin horns of faery blown About the confines of my vision’s scope. For I hold happiness for the crumbling trunk, Skirting the evening when the Autumn wind Moans, querulous, along the gathering dark; As well as for the shooting sprout that feels, Within, the upward golden wells of Spring, When young Pan’s piping down the rosy ways Wakens the tremulous daughters of the year.
If down some golden majesty of stairs From some high, heart-dreamed heaven there should come Flame-messengers, archangel-trumpeted, And bid me fare by folds of rosy dawns, Up to those lights eterne the angels ken; Though down the ladders of celestial light, Immortal invitation sought mine ears, And beat tumultuous music in my brain, From far-off choirs of angel harmonies; Yet my poor heart would lean on human thoughts, And sweetest mem’ries breed on human love, And all my visions be of fields and flowers, And summer brooks and winds and voices sweet, Welling up from dreams of far-off days, Of olden homes and faces, sweet ones loved, Haunting from out the golden shores of youth. Thus ever it is with age when men must die, The phantom rivers of life must childward run, The roads be peopled whence our hearts have come, Who fare the ways of lonely, withered age, The ways that lead down to the dusks of death.
“The morning roads, the golden roads of youth, When all the future cast a majesty, A presence as of God on field and tree, A splendour spirit-felt, that brooded there— The days that were, the days that are no more.
“For hearken, Augur, though a glory lies In visions great, the human heart may build, From out the restless longings of this life; Not all the harpings of celestial throngs, Tuning with spirit-songs the halls of joy, Fabled of saints, where immortality Hungers no more, nor dwelleth pain nor death, Hath power to blot from out the heart of age, Those memories divine of love and youth. For, Augur, we are human, fleshly knit, Aflame with all the instincts of old earth, And she is ours and we were made for her. We sported as babes upon her swards at morn, Conquered her glories in our manhood’s prime, And now the even comes we backward creep Unto her breast, like babes, to sleep at last, Or children who assoilèd in their play; The battles and the fears and the mad joys, The pageants of life all hushed and overthrown, The clamour stilled of trumpet and of drum, The doors all sealed, the tapers flickered out, By some black gust athwart the moors of death.
“In this dim, twilight hour of mine old age, Your heavenly harpings reach mine ears in vain— I, who am but a wreck of what life was— For stronger call the voices of my youth, And backward surge in shoals the olden loves, The noonday struggles and the glorious hopes; The olden spirits haunt about my bed From out the rosy sunrise lands of eld.
“There comes the wife, belovèd, of my youth, Making me heaven with her sainted eyes, Within whose depths earth’s love will ever shine. Hath heaven a joy to match those memories, Of long-gone summer nights astir with bloom, When earth seemed new create, and life divine; Those nights I held her first and knew her mine? There come the babes of my maturer youth, Their voices clamour all about my bed, Making a music sweeter than April brooks. Hath heaven a choir to match those earthly sounds, That long have wandered like a morning dream, Back to our mother-earth, where I go too? I, who am left like some old withered tree, The last of some dead woodland swept of time!