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I.
If my body come from
brutes, my soul uncertain or a fable,
Why not bask amid the senses while the sun of morning
shines,
I, the finer brute rejoicing in my hounds, and in my stable,
Youth and health, and birth and wealth, and choice of
women and of wines?
II.
What hast thou done
for me, grim Old Age, save breaking my bones on the rack?
Would I had past in the morning that looks so bright
from afar!
OLD
AGE
Done for thee? starved
the wild beast that was linkt with thee eighty years back.
Less weight now for the ladder-of-heaven that hangs on
a star.
I.
If my body come from
brutes, tho’ somewhat finer than their own,
I am heir, and this my kingdom. Shall the royal voice
be mute?
No, but if the rebel subject seek to drag me from the throne,
Hold the sceptre, Human Soul, and rule thy province of
the brute.
II.
I
have climb’d to the snows of Age, and I gaze at a field in the
Past.
Where I sank with the body at times in the sloughs of
a low desire,
But I hear no yelp of the beast, and the Man is quiet at last,
As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse
of a height that is higher.
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