The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1875-07-18

| n Soiueu ring with the device, Strike here !"
Greatly the people wondered, though none
The meaning that these words but half ex-
| pressed,
Until learned clerk, who at MONDAY
| With downcast eyes was passing on his way
| Paused, and observed the spot and marked il
/ well,
Wherein the shadow Of the finger fell:
And, coming back at midnight, delved and found
secret stairway aiding under ground.
| Down this he passed into spacious hall
Lit by flaming jewel on the wall;
| And opposite braZen statue stood
With bow and shaft in threatening attitude.
| Upon its forehead, like coronet,
We're these mysterious words of menace set;
: That which | am, am my fatal aim
none can escape, not even yon luminous flame. "
midway the hail was fair ia lie placed,
With cloth Of gold, and golden cups enchased
with rubles, AID the plites and knives were
gold,
And gold the bread, and viands manifold.
Around 1t, silent, motionless, and sad,
were sea- ed gallant knights III armor clad,
And ladies beautiful W tn plume and zone,
but they were stone. their hearts within were
stone
And the vast hall was filed in every part
With silent crowds, stony in face and heart.
Long at the scene, bewlldered and amazed
The trembling clerk in speechless wonder gazed;
Then from the table, by his greed made bold,
he seized goblet and knife of gold,
And suddenly from their seats the guests up
sprang,
The vaulted ceilings with loud clamors rang,
The archer sped his arrow at their call,
ehatterlng the lambent jewel on the wall,
And all was daIk around and overhead;
Stark on the floor the luckIcss clerk lay dead.
The wri er Of this legend records
Its ghostly application in these words
The image Is the Adversary old,
Whose reckoning finger points to realms of gold.
Our iusts and passions are the downward stair
That iesds the soul from dviner air
he archer, Death the flaming jewell Life;
Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife;
The kn1ghts and ladies, all whose flesh and bone
BY averice have been hard ened into stone;
The clerk, the scholar whom the love of pef
Tempts from his books and from his uobier self
The scholar and the world the endless strife,
The discord in the harmonies of life!
The love OF learning, the sequestered hooks,
And all the sweet serenity OF books;
The market-piace, the eager love or gain,
Whose aim Is vanity, and whose end Is pain!
Bat why, you ask, should this tale be told
10 men grown old, or who are growing old?
Il is too late All, nothing is too late
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
Cato learned Greek at eighty Sophoces
Wrote his grand Edipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize Of yer from his compeers,
When each had numbered more than fourscore |
years,
AND Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,
Had but begun his Characters of Men.
Chaucer, at Woodstock, with the nightInga les,
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales;
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Faust when eighty years were past.
These ara indeed exceptions !; but they show
h ow far the gulf. stream of our youth may flow
Into the arctic re ,ons of our lives,
Where little else than life itself survives.
the barometer foretells the storm,
While still the skies clear, the weather warm,
So something in u.s. as old age draws near,
Betrays the pressure Of the atmosphere,
The nimbe mercury, ere we are aware,
Descends the elastic ladder of the air:
The tetale blood in artery and vain
Sinks from its higher levels in the brain;
Whatever poet, orator, or sage
May say Of it, old age is still old age.
1t is the waning, not the crescent moOn
The dusk Of evening, not the blaze of noon;
L Is not strength, but weakness not desire,
But its sUrcea-e not the uerce heat of fire,
The burning and consuming element,
But that Of ashes and of embers spent,
a which s)me living sparks we still discern,
enough to warm, but not enough to burn.
What then !? Shall we sit idly down and cay
The night hath come it is no longer day?
The night hath not vet come we are not quite
tut off from labor by the falling light;
something remains tor us to do or dare
even the Oldest tree some fruit may bear;
Not Gdipus Coloneus or Greek Ode,
Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode {
)ut of the gateway Of the TabArd Inn,
3ut other something, would we but begin;
Tor age is opportunity no less
han youth itself, though IN another Dress
md as the evening twilight fades away
he sky is filled with stars, invisible by day