Classic Poem

I feel that I am growing old —
My lamp of clay! thy flame, behold!
'Gins to burn low: and I've unrolled
My life's eventful volume!

The sea has borne my fragile bark
Close to the shore — now, rising dark,
O'er the subsiding wave I mark
This brief world's final column

'Tis time, my soul, for pensive mood,
For holy calm and solitude;
Then cease henceforward to delude
Thyself with fleeting vanity.

The pride of art, the sculptured thought,
Vain idols that my hand hath wrought —
To place my trust in such were nought
But sheer insanity.

What can the pencil's power achieve?
What can the chisel's triumph give?
A name perhaps on earth may live,
And travel to posterity.

But can proud Rome's Pantheon tell,
If for the soul of Raffaelle
His glorious obsequies could quell
The J UDGEMENT- S EAT'S severity?

Yet why should Christ's believer fear,
While gazing on yon image dear? —
Image adored, maugre the sneer
Of miscreant blasphemer.

Are not those arms for me outspread?
What mean those thorns upon thy head? —
And shall I, wreathed with laurels, tread
Far from thy paths, Redeemer?