Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/184

POEMS OF OCCASION

Who sing of youth, than laurelled fame and love?

But ah! it needs no words to move

Young hearts to some impassioned vow,

To whom already on the wing

The blind god hastens. Even now

Their pulses quiver with a thrill

Than all that wisdom wiser still.

Nor any need to tell of rustling bays,

Of honor ever at the victor's hand,

To them who at the portals stand

Like mettled steeds,—each eager from control

To leap, and, where the corso lies ablaze,

Let out his speed and soonest pass the goal.

Within those ancient halls rehearse?"

Deep in his heart my plaint the minstrel weighed,

And a subtle answer made:

Not yet are glassed within their ken.

Their foster-mother holds them long,—

Long, long to youth,—short, short to age, appear

The rounds of her Olympic Year,—

Their ears are quickened for the trumpet-call.

Sing to them one true song,

Ere from the Happy Vale they turn,

Of all the Abyssinian craved to learn,

And dared his fate, and scaled the mountain-wall

To join the ranks without, and meet what might befall."

III

VESTIGIA RETRORSUM

the Arcadian age,

When, from his hillside hermitage 154