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Into the land of shadows, -all save | How beautiful is youth! how bright it

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gleams

With its illusions, aspirations, dreams! Book of Beginnings, Story without End, Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!

Aladdin's Lamp, and Fortunatus' Purse, That holds the treasures of the universe!

All possibilities are in its hands,

No danger daunts it, and no foe withstands;

In its sublime audacity of faith, "Be thou removed!" it to the mounAnd with ambitious feet, secure and tain saith, proud,

Ascends the ladder leaning on the

cloud!

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That number not the half of those we knew,

Ye, against whose familiar names not yet

The fatal asterisk of death is set,
Ye I salute! The horologe of Time
Strikes the half-century with a solemn
chime,

And summons us together once again,
The joy of meeting not unmixed with pain.

Where are the others? Voices from the deep Caverns of darkness answer me: "They sleep!"

I name no names; instinctively I feel Each at some well-remembered grave will kneel,

And from the inscription wipe the weeds and moss,

For every heart best knoweth its own loss.

I see their scattered gravestones gleam ing white

Through the pale dusk of the impending night;

O'er all alike the impartial sunset

throws

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Wherein are written the histories of ourselves.

What tragedies, what comedies, are there;

What joy and grief, what rapture and despair!

What chronicles of triumph and defeat, Of struggle, and temptation, and retreat! What records of regrets, and doubts, and fears!

What pages blotted, blistered by our tears!

What lovely landscapes on the margin shine,

What sweet, angelic faces, what divine Undimmed by age, unsoiled by damp or And holy images of love and trust,

dust!

Whose hand shall dare to open and explore

These volumes, closed and clasped forevermore?

Not mine. With reverential feet I pass; I hear a voice that cries, "Alas! alas! Whatever hath been written shall remain,

Nor be erased nor written o'er again; The unwritten only still belongs to

thee:

Take heed, and ponder well what that shall be."

As children frightened by a thunder- | But they were stone, their hearts within

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were stone;

And the vast hall was filled in every part With silent crowds, stony in face and heart.

Long at the scene, bewildered and amazed

The trembling clerk in speechless wonder gazed;

Then from the table, by his greed made bold,

He seized a goblet and a knife of gold, And suddenly from their seats the guests upsprang,

The vaulted ceiling with loud clamors

rang,

The archer sped his arrow, at their call, Shattering the lambent jewel on the wall,

And all was dark around and overhead ;Stark on the floor the luckless clerk lay dead!

The writer of this legend then records
Its ghostly application in these words:
The image is the Adversary old,
Whose beckoning finger points to realms
of gold;

Our lusts and passions are the downward stair

That leads the soul from a diviner air; The archer, Death; the flaming jewel, Life;

Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife;

The knights and ladies, all whose flesh and bone

By avarice have been hardened into stone;

The

clerk, the scholar whom the love of pelf

Tempts from his books and from his

nobler self.

Midway the hall was a fair table placed, The scholar and the world! The endWith cloth of gold, and golden cups en

chased

With rubies, and the plates and knives were gold,

And gold the bread and viands manifold.

Around it, silent, motionless, and sad, Were seated gallant knights in armor

clad,

less strife,

The discord in the harmonies of life! The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,

And all the sweet serenity of books; The market-place, the eager love of gain, Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!

And ladies beautiful with plume and But why, you ask me, should this tale be

zone,

told

To men grown old, or who are growing | Sinks from its higher levels in the brain;

old?

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Whatever poet, orator, or sage
May say of it, old age is still old age.
It is the waning, not the crescent moon;
The dusk of evening, not the blaze of

noon:

It is not strength, but weakness; not desire,

But its surcease; not the fierce heat of fire,

The burning and consuming element, But that of ashes and of embers spent, In which some living sparks we still discern,

Enough to warm, but not enough to burn.

What then? Shall we sit idly down

and say

The night hath come; it is no longer day? The night hath not yet come; we are not quite

Cut off from labor by the failing light;
Something remains for us to do or dare;
Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear;
Not Edipus Coloneus, or Greek Öde,
Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode
Out of the gateway of the Tabard Inn,
But other something, would we but be-
gin;

For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another
dress,

And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

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