Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/174

POEMS OF OCCASION Coy Fortune may disdain our noblest cares,

The good she gives at last comes unawares:—

Long, long in vain,—with patience, worth, and love,—

To do her task the enchanted princess strove,

Till in the midnight pitying fairies crept

Unravelling the tangle while she slept.

This, then, the boon our Age of Wisdom brings,—

A knowledge of the real worth of things:

How poor, how good, is wealth; how surely fame

And beauty must return to whence they came,

Yet not for this less beautiful and rare—

It is their evanescence makes them fair

And worth possession. Ours the age still strong

With passions, that demand not curb nor thong;

And ours the age not old enough to set

Youth's joys above their proper worth, nor yet

So young as still to trust its empery more

Than unseen hands which lead to fortune's door.

For most have done the best they could, and all

The reign of law has compassed like a wall;

Something accrued to each, and each has seen

A Power that works for good in life's demesne.

In our own time, to many a masquerade

The hour has come when masks aside were laid:

We've seen the shams die out, the poor pretense

Cut off at last by truth's keen instruments,

The ignoble fashion wane and pass away,—

The fine return a second time, to stay,—

The knave, the quack, and all the meaner brood,

Go surely down, by the strong years subdued,

And, in the quarter-century's capping-race,

Strength, talent, honor, take and hold their place.

More glad, you say, the song I might have sung

In the free, careless days when all were young!

Now, long deferred, the sullen stroke of time

Has given a graver key, a deeper chime, 144