We see the Patriarch’s wintry face,
The maid of Egypt’s dusky glow,
And dream that Youth and Age embrace,
As April violets fill with snow.

Tranced in her Lord’s Olympian smile
His lotus-loving Memphian lies,—­
The musky daughter of the Nile
With plaited hair and almond eyes.

Might we but share one wild caress
Ere life’s autumnal blossoms fall,
And Earth’s brown, clinging lips impress
The long cold kiss that waits us all!

My bosom heaves, remembering yet
The morning of that blissful day
When Rose, the flower of spring, I met,
And gave my raptured soul away.

Flung from her eyes of purest blue,
A lasso, with its leaping chain
Light as a loop of larkspurs, flew
O’er sense and spirit, heart and brain.

Thou com’st to cheer my waning age,
Sweet vision, waited for so long! 
Dove that would seek the poet’s cage
Lured by the magic breath of song!

She blushes!  Ah, reluctant maid,
Love’s drapeau rouge the truth has told! 
O’er girlhood’s yielding barricade
Floats the great Leveller’s crimson fold!

Come to my arms!—­love heeds not years
No frost the bud of passion knows.—­
Ha! what is this my frenzy hears? 
A voice behind me uttered,—­Rose!

Sweet was her smile,—­but not for me;
Alas, when woman looks too kind,
Just turn your foolish head and see,—­
Some youth is walking close behind!

As to giving up because the almanac or the Family-Bible says that it is about time to do it, I have no intention of doing any such thing.  I grant you that I burn less carbon than some years ago.  I see people of my standing really good for nothing, decrepit, effete, la levre inferieure deja pendante, with what little life they have left mainly concentrated in their epigastrium.  But as the disease of old age is epidemic, endemic, and sporadic, and everybody that lives long enough is sure to catch it, I am going to say, for the encouragement of such as need it, how I treat the malady in my own case.

First.  As I feel, that, when I have anything to do, there is less time for it than when I was younger, I find that I give my attention more thoroughly, and use my time more economically than ever before; so that I can learn anything twice as easily as in my earlier days.  I am not, therefore, afraid to attack a new study.  I took up a difficult language a very few years ago with good success, and think of mathematics and metaphysics by-and-by.

Secondly.  I have opened my eyes to a good many neglected privileges and pleasures within my reach, and requiring only a little courage to enjoy them.  You may well suppose it pleased me to find that old Cato was thinking of learning to play the fiddle, when I had deliberately taken it up in my old age, and satisfied myself that I could get much comfort, if not much music, out of it.