Should I then cast away life’s heavy role
To gain my youth, but keep within my soul
A memory of all Life took away
And that I know from me again will seize?
To know that youth’s ideals are fancy’s plays,
Inspired mottoes, just words cast to the breeze.
Should I return to Life’s young merriment
With the mournful thought of how rare it is to hold
A faithful friend, what shallow sentiment
Is hid beneath even best friendship’s mold?
How easily the warmest hands turn cool
How oft hearts change, when the mask no more can fool.
How suddenly man shivers, left alone,
Chilled by man’s selfishness, as cold as stone?
Should I return then with a youthful heart
To love-stirred yearning, though I understand
That the aura that gives love its gilded part
Is just a trinket from a story land?
What I called heaven turns to earth once more
Heavenly manna is only the bread of yore,
That saintly love to which young dreams give birth
Holds its airy throne high up above the earth.
Should my ambition’s flame rise up again
When I have learned that fame but sparks in vain,
That it is not worth the anguish and defeat
That empty, hollow laurel’s woven wreath
Should I retain within my memories nook,
How small, deceitful all that our young soul
Sees hallowed with perfections very look?
How futile is this earthly sham and role
Where ’neath the banners of ideals and dreams
And to the tunes of jeweled words, as tools
They speak of honor, truth and love’s sweet schemes
While only passion and cold metal rules?
Away tempting glass . . . I will be satisfied
With my grey hairs . . . Tis easier to bear
The weight of age than youth of sham deprived
It is this sham that gives youth charm and glare
When Life’s crude hand destroys the golden thread
Of youthful dreams, and when the eye through tears
Sees the emptiness of earthly joy and dread,
And man in vain weeps for his bygone years.
Then but in vain we seek lost Eden’s shore
Deprived of all the charms it knew before.
98
