From childhood's e'en to age's mental dreams,
Those twilights of the soul in life's extremes,
That lead young drivellers from the cradle's gloom,
Or old ones to the darkness of a tomb,
How nature, in our scanty day of breath,
Divides the progress to the night of death!
Prescribes the series when to pule, to play,
Love, act, reflect, then doze the world away,
Till weak mortality's mechanic powers
Have once run round their narrow ring of hours.

" Once round! " exclaim a gay and thoughtless host;
" Rounds after rounds of hours we all can boast. "
To scout so dry a fact would be to mock
Saint Dunstan's strikers or an eight-day clock;
But in a human timepiece no device
Can course the dial of existence twice;
And when the failing nerves and worn-out brain
Have circled into infancy again,
Who shall rotation's earlier force restore,
Or wind up works prepared to move no more?

Much then has each to do before he dies,
While all his action in a nutshell lies.
Yet is the nutshell, upon reason's plan,
Sufficient for the mighty maggot, man:
For though his drama, in its little range,
Be fraught with many an important change;
Though to each mortal various parts we find,
In his own tragi-comedy assigned,
E'en (if the curtain do not drop too soon)
From babe to " lean and slippered pantaloon, "
Still nature's lineations plainly tell
There's room, and time enough, to act them well;
Well as the bard, to whom her lines were known,
Draws them in four-and-twenty of his own.

Yet easy as the task appears, how few
Keep their successive ages full in view!
Most, in all periods heedless of their date,
Prone to be this or that, too soon or late,
Evince, as passions or conceits may rule,
'Tis ne'er too soon nor late to play the fool.

Along the path of life, while to and fro,
Like lap-dogs airing, vice and folly go,
Old curs and puppies jostling in the track,
Now scampering forward and now running back,
'Tis sad the silly animals to see
Reversing points at which they ought to be!
To see what idle war with time they wage,
Enfeebling youth, and turning boys in age;
To see worn one-and-twenty writhe with gout,
Groaning beneath whole vintages drank-out;
Green puberty fast rotting to its fall,
While dotage dyes his eyebrows for a ball!
If then the sillier actors of their day
Transpose the scenes of blossom and decay,
No wonder that the wisest now and then
Forget their cast of character as men;
Throw off the habits of their life by starts,
And prove the best imperfect in their parts.
Statesmen have shown that in affairs of state,
Sedateness cannot always be sedate;
Zeno perhaps might be from books beguiled,
To play a game at marbles with a child;
Nay, stick a pin into a parson's rump,
The strict divine may bawl out " Damme! " plump.
But what if statesman, stoic, or divine
Deviate by chance thus slightly from their line?
If statesman, stoic, or divine do so,
Does this call out for reprobation? No:
But still 'tis laughable; for in a word,
The grave man's nonsense is the most absurd;
And when his casual folly stands confessed,
We own his merits, but enjoy the jest.

While the pure pen of a historic sage
Distils its beauties over every page,
That mirth may chuckle at his clumsy love.
A tale which late tradition yields may prove.