Page:The complete poems of Emily Bronte.djvu/122

66 VIII

THE ELDER'S REBUKE

! When your hair, like mine,

Takes a tint of silver gray;

When your eyes, with dimmer shine,

Watch life's bubbles float away:

When you, young man, have borne like me

The weary weight of sixty-three,

Then shall penance sore be paid

For those hours so wildly squandered;

And the words that now fall dead

On your ear, be deeply pondered—

Pondered and approved at last:

But their virtue will be past!

'Glorious is the prize of Duty,

Though she be "a serious power";

Treacherous all the lures of Beauty,

Thorny bud and poisonous flower!

'Mirth is but a mad beguiling

Of the golden-gifted time;

Love—a demon-meteor, wiling

Heedless feet to gulfs of crime.