YOUR hair is scant, my friend, and mine is scanter,
On heads snowed white by Time, the disenchanter;
In place of joyous beams and jovial twinkles,
Behold, old boy, our faces scored with wrinkles!
Sparkles your legal lore with salt that's Attic!
But, ah! those twinges (gout?), those pangs rheumatic!
With muse of mine no more the public quarrels,
But, Lord! how cold I feel despite the laurels!
If spiced your fame, not so your milk or sago:
Only mild diet suits a sharp lumbago.
While as for me--what critic "puff" avails one
Whose own short breath (asthmatic!) almost fails one?
The world we deemed so rife with fadeless prizes--
Which of us most its hollow show despises?
We'd yield our gains for just one marvellous minute
Of our lost youth, with all youth's glory in it!
Yet from this House of Life, now wrapped in twilight,
Gleams 'mid the shadowy roof Faith's magic skylight;
Whereby as night steals down through weird gradations,
We hail the glow of heavenly constellations.
So, as through darkness only dawn the graces
Of God's calm stars and lofty shining spaces,
That night called death which shrouds our bodies breathless
May flood the heaven of soul with peace made deathless.
