The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1875-07-15

Where0n the shadow OF the ringer fell;
And, coming back at midnight, delved and
a scores doorway leading under ground,
Down this he passed into spacious hall,
Lit by flaming jewel on the wall;
And opposite a brazen statue stood
With bow and sha. { in threatening attitude.
Upon its forehead, like coronet,
Were those mysterious words of menace set:
THAT which am am; my fatal aim
None can escape, not even yon luminous
fiamep
Midway the hall was fair table placed,
With cloth Of gold, and golden cups encased
With rubies, and the plates and knives were
gold,
And gold the bread and viands manifold.
>round IL, silent, motionless aud sad,
Were seated gallant knights in armor clad, .
But they were stone, their hearts within were
stone;
And the vast hall was filed In every part
With ST emit crowds, stony in face and heart.
Long at the scene, bewildered anc amazed
ceTa IN h ada
He seized goblet ard a knife of gold,
And suddenly from their seats the guests up
sprang,
The vaulted ceiling with loud clamors rang,
The archer sped his arrow at their call,
Shattering the ambient jewel on the wall,
And all was dark around and overhead =
Stark on the floor the luckless clerk lay dead!
The writer of this legend then records
| It's ghostly application in these words:
The image is the Adversary old,
| Whose reckoning finger points to realms OF
Our lusts and passions are the downward stair
That leads the soul from a diviner air:
, The archer, death the flaming jewel, Lie;
Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife:
| The knights and ladies, all whose flesh and bone
| BY avsrice have been hardened into stone;
| The clerk, the scholar whom the love of peh
| The scholar and the world! The endless strife
| The discord in the harmonles oflife!
The love of learning, the sequestered hooks,
And all the sweet serenity OF books;
The market-place, the eager love of gain.
| Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!
But why, you ask me, should this tale be told
To men grown old, or who are growing old?
II is too late! All, nothing is too late
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
Cato legrned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand qdipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,
When each had numbered more than fourscort
And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,
Had but begun his Characters of Men.
Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales:
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed Faust when eighty years were past
These are indeed exceptions; but they show
Lotto the arctic regions of our lives,
Where little else than life itself survives.
As the barometer forete!Is the storm
While still the skies are clear, the weathe
warm,
So something in us, as old:age draws near,
Betrays the pressure of the atmosphere.
The nimble mercury, ere we are aware,
DeScendS the elastic ladder OF the air;
The telltale blood in artery and vein
Sinks from its higher levels in the brain;
Whatever poet, orator, or sage
, May say oft, old ageis still old age.
IL is the waning. not the crescent moon,
The dusk OF evening, not the blaze of noon;
1t is not strength, but weakness; not desire,
But its surcease; not the fierce heat of hre,
The burning and consuming element,
But that of ashes and of en- Ders spent,
In which some living sparks we still discern,
Enough to warm, but not enough to burn.
What then? Shall we sit idly down and say
The night hath come; i; is no longer day?
The night hath not yet come; we are not quite
Cut off from labor by the failing light;
Something remains for US to do or dare;
Even the Oldest tree some fruit may bear:
Not CEdipus COloneuS or Greek ode,
Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode
Out of the gateway of the Tabard Inn.
But other something, would we but begin;
For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.