Classic Poem

Now with grey hair begins defeat,
Our sap is running downward;
So turn we from the hurrying street,
And look no longer townward.

'Mid yonder crowds, o'er roof and mart,
A hundred clocks are striking
The hour for us who played a part
Which was not to their liking.

And this is wisdom: not to carp
With wasted breath grown wordy;
For if you harp too long your harp
Becomes a hurdy-gurdy.

For wearied hand and laboured head
That fail to gain their guerdon,
Farewell, when once the word is said,
Makes light the lifted burden.

Farewell! Far harder was the word
To beg what men deny us.
We harped our best; a few have heard,
And others have passed by us!

Leave strumming at the doors of inns
To vagabonds and sharpers!
Where men seek minstrels for their sins
They shall not lack for harpers.

So take the hint, the hands of Time
Are pointing, not unkindly,
Back to the hills we used to climb
While prospects beckoned blindly:

To where, by wood-tracks roughly laid,
With hoofs and cart-ruts dinted,
Some hamlet lies too still for trade,
Where coin was never minted:

Where, cresting lone, a wind-vane stands
High on a time-worn steeple,
And blesses with its circling hands
A still untravelled people.

There let's away, while blood runs warm,
Before the heart's beat weakens,
And roam again with cloud and storm
Along the windy beacons,

And watch by field and wooded coast,
While flying autumn yellows,
The starling gather up his host,
The swallow call his fellows.

No need is now for looking back;
If any wish to find us,
They, too, can follow in our track
The road we leave behind us.

Or if they liefer would forget,
'Tis easy to ignore us;
Farther and farther from them yet
The road that lies before us.