Classic Poem

Our very passions leave us — our best tastes
Subside, as do our pleasures, and depart;
The moss and ivy grow about the heart,
And a cold apathy and dulness wastes
Our virgin fancies. We grow old apace,
While every flower that boyhood loved keeps young,
As if in bitter mockery of our pride!
And this it is to run ambition's race,
To lose the pulse of hope, youth's precious tide,
And through strange regions, and with unknown tongue,
As vain as Edward Irving's, wander wide,
Seeking our solemn phantoms, — things of air,
Thin, unsubstantial, which our hearts still grace
With homage, and our eyes still fancy bright and fair.