Classic Poem

A YOUNG man stood by the summer sea,
In the flush of the rising sun,
And the wavelets gleamed as the light down streamed,
Gilding them one by one.

Over the waves with the tips of gold,
At the sun and the shining sea,
Like an eagle, he gazed, with eye undazed,
And a soul all young and free.

“Youth and the world are mine!” he cried;
“Honor and hope and love
Calm as the sea is my life to me,
And bright as the skies above.

“And the blue-eyed lass with the golden hair,
Who has given her heart to me,—
Ah! she will be mine with her love divine,
When my ship comes over the sea.”

An old man stood on a barren beach,
Shading his haggard eyes
With a hand that shook, while his weary look
Went from earth to sea and skies.

And never a one to pity him
Of all the friends of his youth;
For Hope was dead, and there lived instead
The sinister lesson, Truth.

And the gold-haired lass that had looked on him
With her eyes of heavenly blue,
Had gone, with his fame and riches and name,
As blue-eyed goddesses do.

Haggard and broken his shadow fell,
Clouding the laughing foam;
Wrecked in the strife and storm of life,
His ship had never come home.