Classic Poem

Since beauty holds no lease of settled date,
And youth has tenure but while roses blow,
And mortal hope must yield to mortal fate,
And every dream that comes must one day go —
Since these most lovely phantoms cannot be
Companions in the grey years that confess
Wild love to hold life's chiefest sovereignty,
Yet must without it seek for happiness —
Then let the autumn of the soul become
Transfigured with its own appropriate hues;
As in high pageant, when the flowers are dumb,
Old forests lift the splendor earth must lose,
And hills with solemn foliage of the fall
Outvaunt the spring, in phantom festival.