Classic Poem

My eyes are dim, my thin locks gray,
The avalanche of years hath bent
My frame — will it suspend decay
If at your bidding I repent?

Repent! Do monarchs abdicate
When senses wane and pleasures cloy?
Doth avarice expropriate
The wealth which buys no other joy?

The hoary king retains his throne,
The miser's palsied grasp his hoard;
Shall I the crumbling fane disown
Of which my will is still the lord?

Repent! While Love's bright galaxies
Still glisten in the blue of sleep,
And shapes once worshipped greet my eyes
When up the slope I turn to peep?

Read in yon bark that quits the shore,
The tale, by years and tempests told,
Of planks, without their sap of yore,
Wave-twisted from the builder's mould.

Yet, while she floats, intrepid tars
Confide their all to her, nor pause
To think how frail the screen that bars
Them from the ocean's myriad jaws.

She hath her legends of rare freights,
Of food to starving peoples borne,
Of silks and teas from China's gates,
And spices from the Isles of Morn.

When weary of such yarns her crew
Cast webs, like spiders, to the shore;
Their watch, in tempests, they fight through,
Then sleep as though the fight were o'er.

If they beyond such hourly care
Look not, whose cares may cease to-morrow,
Shall I that drift I know not where
Weigh down my sinking years with sorrow?

The wind is rising; let me glean,
From Time's heaped sands, such golden grains
As miners gather up between
The walls of long-exhausted veins.