Page:Ballads of a Bohemian.djvu/129

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Brave Thackeray has trolled of days when he was twenty-one, And bounded up five flights of stairs, a gallant garreteer; And yet again in mellow vein when youth was gaily run, Has dipped his nose in Gascon wine, and told of Forty Year. But if I worthy were to sing a richer, rarer time, I’d tune my pipes before the fire and merrily I’d strive To praise that age when prose again has given way to rhyme, The Indian Summer days of life when I’ll be Sixty-five;

For then my work will all be done, my voyaging be past,