'The straw is too old to make pipes of.' -- DON QUIXOTE. YOU ask a 'many-winter'd' Bard Where hides his old vocation? I'll give -- the answer is not hard -- A classic explanation. 'Immortal' though he be, he still, Tithonus-like, grows older, While she, his Muse of Pindus Hill, Still bares a youthful shoulder. Could that too-sprightly Nymph but leave Her ageless grace and beauty, They might, betwixt them both, achieve A hymn de Senectute; But She -- She can't grow gray; and so, Her slave, whose hairs are falling, Must e'en his Doric flute forgo, And seek some graver calling, -- Not ill-content to stand aside, To yield to minstrels fitter His singing-robes, his singing-pride, His fancies sweet -- and bitter! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A MINUET ON REACHING THE AGE OF FIFTY by GEORGE SANTAYANA TO GEORGE CRUIKSHANK, ESQ., ON SEEING HIS PICTURE ... by MATTHEW ARNOLD SONNET (4) by JOACHIM DU BELLAY TO CHILDREN: 5. DAME HOLIDAY by WILLIAM ROSE BENET EPIGRAM ON SAID OCCASION by ROBERT BURNS TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. FROM CAVERNS DARK by EDWARD CARPENTER |