Come, brothers, let us sing a dirge,--
A dirge for myriad chances dead;
In grief your mournful accents merge:
Sing, sing the girls we might have wed!
Sweet lips were those we never pressed
In love that never lost the dew
In sunlight of a love confessed,--
Kind were the girls we never knew!
Sing low, sing low, while in the glow
Of fancy's hour those forms we trace,
Hovering around the years that go;
Those years our lives can ne'er replace!
Sweet lips are those that never turn
A cruel word; dear eyes that lead
The heart on in a blithe concern;
White hand of her we did not wed;
Fair hair or dark, that falls along
A form that never shrinks with time;
Bright image of a realm of song,
Standing beside our years of prime;--
When you shall go, then may we know
The heart is dead, the man is old.
Life can no other charm bestow
When girls we might have loved turn cold!
"NEITHER!"
So ancient to myself I seem,
I might have crossed grave Styx's stream
A year ago;--
My word, 'tis so;--
And now be wandering with my sires
In that rare world we wonder o'er,
Half disbelieve, and prize the more!
Yet spruce I am, and still can mix
My wits with all the sparkling tricks,
A youth and girl
At twenty's whirl
Play round each other's bosom fires,
On this brisk earth I once enjoyed:--
But now I'm otherwise employed!
Am I a thing without a name;
A sort of dummy in the game?
"Not young, not old:"
A world is told
Of misery in that lengthened phrase;
Yet, gad, although my coat be smooth,
My forehead's wrinkled,--that's the truth!
I hardly know which road to go.
With youth? Perhaps. With age? Oh no!
Well, then, with those
Who share my woes,
Doomed to mere fashionable ways,--
Fair matrons, cigarettes, and tea,
Sighs, mirrors, and society?
Is it a folly still to twirl,
And smirk and promenade and querl
About the town?
I'll put this down:
A man becomes downright _blast_
Before he knows that he is either
That, or what I am--call it, "Neither."
Oh, for a hint what we shall do,
We bucks whose comedy is through!
Who'd be sedate?
And yet I hate
To pose persistently to-day
As one just trying flights, you know,
When I _did_ try them long ago!
Suppose I hurry up the tide
Of age, and bravely drift beside
Those hoary dogs
Who lie like logs
Around the clubs where life is hushed?
My blood runs cold! What? Say farewell
To this year's new bewildering belle!
Hold, man, the secret broad and huge,
With every well-known subterfuge!
If bald and gray
And thin, still say
You're only thirty: don't be crushed;
But when your voice shakes o'er a pun,
Be off to China:--your day's done!